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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/washingtonoutsidOOtown 



WASHINGTON, 



utside j^nt> Inside. 



A PICTURE AND A NARRATIVE 






ORIGIN, GROWTH, EXCELLENCES, ABUSES, BEATJTIES, AND 
PERSONAGES 



OUR GOVERNING CITY. 



By GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEM), "gath," 

author, of "the new world compared with the old," and Washington correspondent 
of the chicago tribune. 



" We do not know of any American newspaper-English which we like hetter, as English, than that of Mr. Geo. 
Alfred Townsend. Our readers are not ignorant of Mr. Townsend's services at the Capital, where he has distin- 
guished himself as a hater of shams and friendly to all those measures of political reform to which tbe hetter 
portion of the Republican party is irrevocably committed. It is, to be Bure, sometimes easier to be amused by 
Mr. Townsend's personalities, than to apologize for them ; but there is a humor and picturesqueness about them 
which is nothing less than poetical."— New York Nation. 



JAMES BETTS I 
HARTFORD, CONN., AND CHuja^u, 

S. Mi. BETTS &c CO., 
CINCINNATI, OHIO. 

1873. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, 

By JAMES BETTS & CO., 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



i 



From the NEW YORK NATION. 

"We do not know of any American newspaper-English which we like 
better, as English, than that of Mr. George Alfred Townsend. Our read- 
ers are not ignorant of Mr. Townsend's services at the capital, where he 
has distinguished himself as a hater of shams and friendly to all those 
measures of political reform to which the better portion of the Republican 
party is irrevocably committed. It is, to be sure, sometimes easier to be 
amused by Mr. Townsend's personalities, than to apologize for them; but 
there is a humor and picturesqueness about them which is nothing less than 
poetical." 



(5) 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



Introductory. 
The Credit Mobilier investigation of 1873 — Excitement in the country 
over its developments — A review of the causes of our political demor- ' 
aiization — Eminent men affected by the scandal — Two Vice-Presi 
dents and the heads of the important committees scathed — The- back 
pay plunder— How to approach the remedy. .»»•«.»» 21 

CHAPTER il. 

How Washington City came to be. 
Was it a job or a compromise ? — Had Gen. Washington interested 
motives in locating it? — The land owners and their wrangles — Con- 
gress driven out of Philadelphia — The manner of buying the ground 
— Capital moving — Reminiscences of the site — Character of the early 
population — Washington rides out with the commissioners — His mor- 
tifications — What the town has cost the Government — Condition of 
civilization when the city was founded. * ... 25 

CHAPTER III. 

The Civil versus the Congressional Service. 
Which is the most honest ? — Many of our evils inherited from colonial 
times — The constituency often responsible for bad ■ Congressmen — 
Want of a national spirit — Provincialism in public life — Mr. Holman 
opposed to astronomy — Friendlessness of the federal institutions — ■ 
Reasons for the decay of our navy yards — Private ship yards and 
green timber — The contract-getting Congressmen— Bureau life more 
responsible than political life — Instances of eminent clerks — Admiral 
Goldsborough— Dr. William Thornton— Wm. Lambert founds the 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

Observatory— John C. Rives— Amos Kendall— "Villages of clerks— 
Clerksville— Howardsville— Mr. Edward D. Neill — Railroad law- 
yers in the Land Office — Gen. Spinner — Sketch of John J. Knox, the 
comptroller of the currency e 38 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Job op Planning the Federal City. 
Major L 'Enfant, the landscape gardener — Jefferson's influence in the 
plan of the city — L 'Enfant discharged — His lonely life and death — 
Vindication of his extravagance— His quarrel with Daniel Carroll — 
Sketch of Andrew Ellicott, L 'Enfant's successor — Benjamin Banne- 
ker, the negro surveyor — Washington's prediction concerning his 
namesake city. , 47 

CHAPTER V. 

The Architects op the Capitol and their feuds. 
Stephen S. Hallet, the French architect — His claim to have won the 
premium for the great structure — An examination of his drawings — 
"Want of information about him — Dr. William Thornton wje success- 
ful architect — His life and versatility — Hallet dischar.yt!d by the 
commissioners — Employment of George Hadfield — His public con- 
structions — His criticism upon Thornton's plan — Diseharg ;d — Em- 
ployment of James Hoban — Hoban's career in America — Le builds 
the White House — He is succeeded by Latrobe — Account of that 
fine architect — He builds the wings — Quarrels with the commission- 
ers — Is" succeeded by Chas. Bulfinch of Boston — Romantic s'oryof 
Bulfinch — He builds the center, rotunda, and library-^-Is succeeded 
by Robt. Mills — Mills builds the old Treasury, Patent-Office, and 
Post-Office — Is discharged — The stone quarries at Seneca and Acquia 
Creeks — The new wings designed — Life of Thonias U. Walter, the 
great classical architect — Cost of materials — Expense of the Capitol 
— Renown of the great building — Its associations 56 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Lobby and its Gentry. 
Definition of lobbyist — Jefferson makes the architect screen the lobby 
— Fine abilities of some lobbyists — Lobbyists relations with news- 
paper men — The poker-playing lobbyist — Anecdote — The cotton- 
bug scheme to ref'i'-l the. cotton tax — Its failure — Extravagant 
scheme — Adolph Sulio and his tunnel — He is opposed f>y the Bank 



X CONTENTS. 2 

dome — Brumidi — The crypt — Associations of the rotunda — Future 
of the Capitol — The lighting apparatus — Beautiful phenomenon — 
Other structures compared with our'-s — Cost of some of the items — 
A talk with the dome builders — How the war affected the contractor 
— What he has to say — How a penurious Congress agreed to have 
a new dome— Pretty romance 1ST 

CHAPTER XII. 

Some of the Organic Evils of our Congressional System. 
Jroken promises come home to roost^The Congressman seducing his 
constituent to be an office-getter — An illustration — How Indian trea- 
ties are put through — The Indian title to lands — Value of acquaint- 
anceship in Washington— Jobbers taking advantage of the machinery 
of Government — The Commercial Republic — Mr. Shannon on dem- 
agoguery — How rich men buy legislation to save time — The manual 
of parliamentary rule — Neglect of public business — The boy Speaker . 
— Willie Todd — Thaddy Morris — The Senate Chamber — Cussedness 
in the Senate — Personal resentment in legislation .149 

CHAPTER XHT. 

The Cheerful Patriot in Washington. 
\. good-natured, nondescript character introduced to show the progress 
of the times — His comments on the city — His reminiscences of old 
times — The bad hotels of other daj's — Improvement in manners — 
Temperance and obedience to law — Improved chastity — Decay of 
cock fighting — More courtesy than in old times — Ground for hope 
in all directions — His vista of the city 160 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Talk with the Oldest Citizen of Washington. 
^. man who remembers back to 1796 — Christian Times in his ninetieth 
year — His recollections of the old city — Noble Hurdle, his contem- 
porary — He retraces his steps three-quarters of a century — He recol- 
lects all the Presidents — Sees Washington in the Federal City — A 
very old leaf from the past 167 

CHAPTER XT. 

Style, Extravagance, and Matrimony at the Seat of Govern- 
ment. 
jost of living in Washington — Great profligacy in feeding — Jno. Welck- 
er and his celebrated restaurant — The Washington markets — Early 



Xli CONTENTS. 

good times in the history of the city — Beale's, WetherilPs, Crutchet's, 
Gautier's — Welcker's great dining room — Price of a Congressional 
dinner — Twenty dollars a plate — His chief cook — Instances of ex- 
travagant meals at Washington — Spanish mackerel — Brook trout — 
Mountain mutton — Canvas backs — Potomac snipe — Potomac shad — 
Savannah shad — Black bass — Capon au sauce Goddard — Truffles — 
Hotel life at Washington and New York — Extravagance of politi- 
cians — Prices at the Arlington Hotel — The prince's ball — The scene — 
Dresses of the host and guest — Members of the legation — Romance of 
the Gerolt family — The Baron's daughter goes to a convent — A blast- 
ed matrimonial project — The diplomatic body — Marriages between 
American girls and foreign ministers — The prose side of the diplo- 
matic corps — Bridal couples at Washington — The diary of a bride 
who came to see the impeachment trial — A laughable description. IT 

CHAPER XVI. 

Domestic History of the White House. 

The Presidents and their wives in order — Mrs. Adams's letters — She 
makes the first description of the interior of the White House — Jeffer- 

» son runs in debt as President — Borrows money from the Richmond 
banks — Mrs. Madison again— Monroe and the era of good feeling — 
Description of the apartments — State dinners — The wall paper and 
ornaments — Reminiscences of the house — John Quincy Adams in- 
troduces a billiard table— Clothes to dry in the East Room — Jas. Par-' 
ton on the White House — Portrait painters there — Mrs. Eaton — 
Jackson's manners — Matty Van Buren— Jackson abuses Congress — 
Jackson's two forks — Deaths in the White House — John Tyler's 
bride — Harriet Lane .' 194 

CHAPTER XVII. 

A Series of open air Excursions around Washington to get 
rid of Politics. 

The ride to Bull Run — Appearance of that memorable battle-field 
— Fairfax Court-house as it is — Centreville — Dinner at Robinson's 
house— The battle between the two Capitols — Talk with Majof Tyler 
at Fairfax — The old stone bridge — The horrible Virginia roads — 
Bull Run to look upon — Analysis of the battle — General McDowell 
— 56 miles in 16 hours — A day in the old forts — A walk across the 
Eastern Branch— The 56 forts of Washington— A visit tb the poor 
house of Washington — The Congressional Cemetery — Paupers at the 
Capital City- ■" he ead fate of many a 

pbca -i ;> i ie to live in . . - ■ 20 



CONTENTS. Xlii 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Necessity of Changes in our Government to counteract Abuses. 

A great number of amendments already proposed to the constitution — > 
Catalogue of these amendments — " God in the. constitution " — A very 
important amendment: the election of U. S. senators by the' people 
directly — Senator Harlan's amendment to this effect — Arguments pro 
and con — Demoralization of the Senate as a patronage-making body. 227 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Some of the Bureaux of our Government visited. 
The Coast Survey — -Its origin and development — What it has to do — 
The Supreme Court and the fees of the most eminent lawyers there — 
The chief door-keeper of Congress — A walk through the document 
room — The printing of maps — A mooted case — Joe Wilson — A reve- 
nue detective — The whisky frauds — How they were accomplished — 
Talk with a Mr. Martin — Stationery contractors at Washington — 
How Judge Foote was attacked by the envelope-makers — Secrets of 
the government printing office — Secrets of the Patent Office — Munn 
&■ Co. — Crowding of the government buildings. ...... 235 

CHAPTER XX. 

Celebrated Scandals of our time. 
Corruptions incidental to the war — Rise of lobby and railroad influence 
in New York and Pennsylvania — How it took advantage of the war 
— Muster of the lobby at Washington — Inflation, high tariff and high 
prices— Sentiment and robbery run together — Incapacity of Congress 
to give a policy to the government — Prosperity infects the whole mass 
— A novel remedy proposed — Heads of departments to have seats 
in Congress — Want of patriotism in the constituency — Judge Hoar 
ho unde d out of office — John C. Fremont and the El Paso railroad- 
French justice more certain than American — Scandal of the Vienna 
exhibition — Senators toadying to Ben Holliday — The Alaska fur seal j 
controversy — McGarrahan's claim for the New Idria mine — How Con- 
gress is flooded with stock . . 255 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Crimes and Follies of our Public Life. 
A story of Mexican land claims — Impertinence of claim jobbers — Talk 
with Burton C. Cook — The Black Bob lands — Story of French claims 
— Mr. Benton on French claims — The lobby thirty years ago — Basil 



XIV • CONTENTS'. 

Hall on French claims — The romance of claimants — Blanton Dun- 
can — Congressman Stokes sent to prison — The cadetship exposure — 
Whittemore — Bowen, the bigamist — Stock gamblers at Washington — 
Political friendship — Abolition of the Electoral College — Need of a 
new constitutional convention — Stealing a seat in Congress — Morton 
and Conkling on the Caldwell case — Dead-heading in public life — ■ 
Denominational support of unworthy Congressmen — Need of Spartan 
sacrifice to save the State ■' . 275 

CHAPTER XXII. 

The Supreme Court and Local Justice at Washington. 
General arrangement of the courts of the District — Picture of the 
supreme court — Its atmosphere and garniture — Its clerks and offices 
— The past Chief Justices — Interior life of the Judges — The robing 
servitor — Opposition to the court from Congress — How the decisions 
are made — The deciding room— Opening of the court — District bar — - 
Local lawyers — Philip Barton Key — Tillotson-Brown case — Fight- 
ing lawyers out of the field 298 

CHAPTER XXHI. 

A Picture of Mt. Vernon in 1789. 
The estate of Washington as it was in his lifetime— He is advised of 
his selection as President— His acceptance — David Humphreys and 
his household — Home comforts at that period — The first President's 
character — His land and social life — A study for politicians and 
Presidents now-a-days — Financial struggles —Washington's love of 
the Potomac country — Apprehensions of its declining condition — Its 
fishei-ies— His husbandry — His thoughts on emancipation— Shipping 
facilities — Washington, no ladies' man — His political cast and rank 
—Reminiscences of Mt. Vernon— Current estimates of Washington 

Last visit to his mother — Affecting interview — Departs for the 

Capital in New York 311 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Dueling Ground at Bladensburg and. the great 
duels there. 
A social sketch of Monroe's administration — The battle-field and duel- 
ing ground of Bladensburg — Several duels cited — Graves and Cilley 
—Mason and McCarty— Clay and Randolph— talk with village 
loiterers — A very complete account of the duel between Barron and 
Decatur— Reminiscences of Decatur— His widow. 330 



CONTENTS. XV 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Some of the Ablest Men of Affairs of the Period. 
Personal sketches of E. M. Stanton— Thaddeus Stevens — James A. 
McDougall — Thomas Benton — Chas. Sumner — Benjamin F. Butler 
—Carl Schurz — Anecdotes descriptive of their public careers and 
methods of doing public business — The glut of capable men — The 
dearth of illustrious ones. 359 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Curiosities of the Great Bureaux of the Government. 
The annual appropriation bills — What it costs to be governed — Quaint 
features of the executive departments — The New York custom house 
— Figures about it — The marines and their old barrack at Washing-^ 
ton — The agricultural department — The Smithsonian Institute — The 
detective of the Treasury — The Librarian of Congress — Peter Force 
— The bug microscopist — Novel Judge-Advocate — Mint and coinage 
laws — Army and Navy medical museum — Quaint people in the Treas- 
ury. . 376 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

My pursuit of Credit Mobilier. 
I receive orders to find what the scandal amounts to — Start for Phila- 
delphia — Rummage amongst the court records — Trace up the Credit 
Mobilier Company to the fiscal agency — See the commissioner to take 
testimony — Telegraph to the plaintiif — Visit New York — Interview 
Col. Henry S. McComb — He gives at full length the story of his suit. 402 

, CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Credit Mobilier brought to bat. 
The credit mobilier examination — Inside the committee room — Judge 
Poland's appearance — The prosecuting witness, McComb — Ames 
and Alley — The culpable Congressmen — Their embarrassment and 
distress — Examination of each case — Finding of the committee — 
Brooks and Ames designated for expulsion — Both die in a few weeks 
— The United States bring suit against the credit mobilier. , . 423 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

The Worst. of Washington Life. 
Women of the lobby — Lucy Cobb — "Comanche" — Mrs. Gen. Straig- 
ton — A scene in clerk life — The stews of Murder Bay — Dying of an 



XVI CONTENTS. 

idle class-o-The old gamesters of Washington — Death of Jack 
McCarty at the hands of Dennis Darden — Closing up of Joe Hall's 
— Negro servants waiting upon our statesmen — Interview with one — 
Madness of the constituency — Dirt and the taverns — The national 
hotel disease — How it happened — The first and last of slavery in 
Washington — Vestiges of it — The Slave Pen 456 

CHAPTER XXX. 

The Land Office and its Involutions. 
Fraud in the civil service — The interior department— How the land 
grant railways manipulate it — Carl Schurz's opinion — Testimony of 
a correspondent seeking information — The indisposition to let the 
public be advised — "Ways that are dark and tricks that are vain." 475 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Humors and Clouds of Congressional Life. 

How one feels when he gets to Congress — Getting the blues away from 
home — Associates — Description of the opening performance — How 
Mr. Blaine was elected Speaker — The delegates as tadpoles — Sending 
the message to Congress — The Caucus — Inside the Caucus — Its tyr- 
anny — Woes of the lobby members — Brilliant scene of party tyranny 
at the impeachment trial — Perquisites — Down in the document room 
— Extravagance of the public printing — End of the franking privi- 
lege — Talk with the chief door-keeper — How constituents pursue 
their members — Folly of putting up new Post-Offices — The rural 
Congressman before the architect of the Treasury 495 

CHAPTER XXXII. * 

A Tilt at some of the Great and Little Goblins. 
Sketch of " the striker " who makes food of people seeking relief — The 
Alaska purchase and investigation — Poetry of the lobby — Arbitrary 
Seizure of letters and telegrams — Butler in cream — Peddling char- 
ters and special legislation — The Kansas ringleaders — The Pacific 
coast public men — Pomeroy and Caldwell compared — Fremont and 
the El Paso road — Agricultural College lands — Weakness of depart- 
ment reports — The Indian ring — A scene at the Patent Office — List 
of the back pay culprits , 516 



CONTENTS. XV11 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Chiefly Antiquarian and Descriptive. ^ 

Opening of the public offices in Washington, 1800 — Original jurisdic- 
tion — The first excitement in the Capital — The naniers of the city — ■• 
Early buyers of lots — Peculations — Carrollsburg — A defense of the 
original proprietors — Origin of the name of Georgetown — Weld's 
description of the city in 1 796 — Tobias Leer's book— ^Doctor Ward- , 
en's account of the City in 1810— Sutcliff 's visit — Francis Asbury's 
account — Tom Moore's visit in 1804, and what he wrote in poetry — 
The bad roads of Maryland — Contemporaneous cities — Wharves — 
Failures of the early house-builders — Opening of turnpike roads — 
Wolcott's sketch of the Washingtoners — Janson's sketch — J. Davis's 
sketch — Excerpts from the commissioners' books — Retrocession in 
1803 — Pumps — The aqueduct — Growth of population — Present taxes 
— Help from the Presidents — Georgetown College — Early Alexandria 
— Washington Canal, now and then — History of the Navy Yard — 
The old City Hall — The longitude and the Observatory — Blodget's 
great hotel — Sketch of the Treasury buildings, old and new — Archi- 
tects of the departments — Rise of the departments and their organi- 
zation — Conception of the Patent-Office — The churches of the city 
— Schools — Penitentiary — Banks — Chesapeake canal — Freshets — 
Hotels — Braddock's rock — Wilkinson's proposition to stand siege — 
Capture by the British — Building of the forts in the rebellion — De- 
scription of the system — Geology of Washington — Effort to move 
the Capital in 1870 — The movement rebuked — Revival of the city — 
The board of public works , , 543 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

A Record of Historical Events in the District of Columbia, 
From 1621 to 1873 585 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

Social Sketches of the Old and New in Washington. 
The Burns family' and its history — Gen. Van Ness and the mausoleum 
— Disinterment of the old Remus — Story of sister Gertrude — The 
Carroll estate — Original squatters on the Capital site — Old Alexan- 
dria — The Calvert's place at Mt. Airy — Thos. Law and John Tayloe 
— Notley hall and Marshall hall — Arlington house and the Custis 
family — Brentwood — The Carrolls — Georgetown places — Sketches of 
ommissionei s— .tvualostan island — Amos Kendall's" life and tomb 

2 



XV111 CONTENTS. 

— A visit to Jefferson's place at Monticello — Great Falls and Jackson, 
the blockade runner — The Loudon Valley — Georgetown Cemetery — 
Approach to Washington City from the North— Topography— Up in 
the ibrts — The Washington monument 602 

. CHAPTER XXXYI. 

Jobbery Coeval with Government. 
An inquiry as to whether we are more corrupt than in the early days 
of the Government — The Yazoo land swindles — Assumption of state 
debts — Trading off the Capitol for a job — Evils of the national bank 

— Investigation — Hamilton attacked — The Randall and Whitney 
case of 1795 — Baldwin and Frelinghuysen — Expulsion of Blount — 
Licentiousness proved against Alexander Hamilton — His confession— 
The first present-taker — The first breach of decorum — Incendiarism 
in 1800 — A New Hampshire judge removed in 1804 — Judge Chase's 
trial — The senior Dallas — Secret service money — Spanish pensioners 
— The whisky insurrectionists — Case of the sloop, Active — Dismal end 
of the second U. S. bank — California land frauds— Limantour — Mrs. 
Gaines' case — Description — Naval frauds during the rebellion— Over 
issue of bonds — The lobby schemes of 1873— Mileage frauds — Full 
story of the back pay swindle — Cost of running the Government 
now-a-days — A shameless Puritan member — God in the constitution 

— The remedy . . . 643 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Chief Justice Chase as a Representative Statesman. 
His life and death. 671 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

The Best and Worst op Society at the Capital. 
Winks at the high, the quiet, and the queer — President Grant going 
to inauguration in 1869 — State sociables at Washington — Extrava- 
gance in dinner-giving — Shoddy in the Senate — Worldliness para- 
mount — A dinner with a great surgeon — How they got the dome 
on the Capitol with a lunch— The house of the Secretary of State 

— Funerals of state brides — Mrs. Belknap — Mrs. Corcoran — Mrs. 
Douglas — The old Seward mansion — Sumner and Fish quarrel over 
duck — Washington humor — Alkakangie — Want of a civil service to 
make good middle-class society — The Treasury girl— her song. . 678 



CONTENTS. XIX 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

Excursions in the Potomac Country. 
A chapter to take breath upon — Lower necks > of Maryland — Queer 
people on the road-sides — Beautiful prospects of the city — The dark 
and bloody ground — Visit to Marlborough — Surrattsville — Revival of 
Booth's night ride after the murder — His course through lower Mary- 
land — Lewis Weichinann. — Account of his visit to Mrs. Surratt — 
How Booth crossed the Potomac — Dr. Sunderland and President 
Lincoln — Mr. Lincoln as an inventor — Booth's remains — Ride into 
Upper Maryland — The metropolitan branch railroad — Ride into Vir- 
ginia — How to go to Mt. Vernon — Reminiscences of the first and 
second Washington. 700 

CHAPTER XL. 

Art, Letters, and Bohemians at the Capital. 
Notes on literary people who have lived at Washington — How the peo- 
ple get the news — Old time correspondents — Imported sculptors — 
Strolls in the ateliers — The pictures of the Capital — Criticism upon 
them — Crawford — Greenough — Vinnie Ream — An artist's estimate 
of tha paintings — Humors of capitaline criticism 736 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 



The public mind is at last exercised on the subject of schem- 
ing and jobbery. 

The Credit Mobilier investigation accomplished what many- 
years of unthanked agitation and challenge failed to do. It 
reached such eminent reputations and made such general wreck 
of political prospects and accomplishments, that every class of 
citizens — even those who came to scoff, remained beside their 
Capitol to pray. This was the first element of encouragement ; 
for it proved that in every extremity of the American nation 
there is still a public sentiment to be found, and it will rally on 
the side of good morals and the reputation of the state if it 
understands the necessity. 

The people must not be blamed if, in the great variety of 
affairs and investigations, they often look on confused and apa- 
thetic. Our government is so extensive in area and so diversi- 
fied in operations, that it requires men of state — statesmen — to 
keep its machinery in order and prevent waste, neglect, inter- 
ference, and incendiarism. No amount of mere honesty and 
good negative inclination can keep the ship of state headed 
well to the wind. A reasonable experience in civil affairs, 
education, and executive capacity are requisite, and it is when 
the accidents of war and the extremities of political parties 
bring men without these qualities to the surface that the enemy 
of public order and well regulated government seeks and finds 
his opportunity. 

Such is our present condition. It is to our noble system of 
schools and our unhampered social civilization that we owe the 
moderate capacity, even of men of accident, for public affairs. 



22 INTRODUCTORY. 

From the time of President Fillmore, all our Chief Magistrates 
have been of this popular growth. Mr. Lincoln proved to be 
the possessor of powers extraordinary in their combination, 
ranging from the Jesuitry of the frivolous to the depth and 
gravity of the heroic, and, at last, the tragic. He kept in view 
great objects of human performance, and showed how profoundly 
his inherited idea of the equality of rights and his belief in the 
destiny of America to protect and teach them, animated his 
conduct. He bore the sword of the country while constantly 
possessed of the ambition to preserve its nationality and expel 
slavery; his amiable nature added to these achievements the 
softness and sweetness of a personal mission, and his lofty fate 
the solemnity of a personal martyrdom. 

The elements of corruption, inseparable from human nature, 
had long existed in a more or less organized form in the United 
States, and they waxed in strength and took enormous propor- 
tions during Mr. Lincoln's administration. He was a states- 
man and kept his mind steadily upon the larger objects, preferring 
to leave the correction of incidental evils to. the administrators 
who should succeed the war. Had he been of a desponding 
spirit, and nervous and violent upon errors of omission and 
commission by the way, we might never have kept in view the 
main purposes of the war, but would have been demoralized by the 
ten thousand peculations and intrigues which marked the course 
of that extraordinary conflict. 

It is our province and the task of statesmanship in our time, 
to return along the course of those war-ridden years and take 
up their civil grievances, exhibit them clearly and correct them 
unflinchingly. If we do not do so the Union is too great for us 
and emancipation has been a mockery. 

The opportunities for gain at the public and general expense, 
had been too vast during the war to be suddenly relinquished 
at the peace. President Johnson was as honest personally as 
President Lincoln, but the division of arms was now succeeded 
by a conflict of policy in which the harpies who had studied the 
government to take advantage of it plied between both sides. 



INTRODUCTORY. 23 

and by the common weakness of the administration and Con- 
gress continued their work. They set up the audacious prop- 
osition that the schemes which prevailed in the war and the 
grade of taxation consequent upon it were the declared national 
policy. A large proportion of the capital and enterprise of the 
country took the same ground. The currency was maintained 
in its expanded amount, and war was even declared upon gold, • 
the standard of valuation throughout civilization. High prices 
and high wages were advocated as evidences of national happi- 
ness, and, of course, high salaries were demanded to make 
public and private conditions consistent with each other. The 
prevalence of money, work, and rank during the war were not 
suffered to relax, and congress undertook to supply artificial 
means of prosperity by laying out schemes, subsidizing and 
endowing corporations, increasing offices and commissions, and 
altering the tariff and the tax list. The victorious side in the 
wrangle about policy was soon represented in congress by a 
great number of adventurers, foreigners in the constituency 
they affected to represent, and shameless and unknown. 

At this period the third President of the new era was elected, 
a brave and victorious soldier, who was in part a pupil and 
associate of the loose notions of the period. He had a modest 
person, and this, with his historic exploits, affected the sensibil- 
ities of his countrymen, including many of the larger men in 
literature, criticism, and society, so that this personal sympathy, 
edded to the financial necessities of the time, and the well 
organized Northern sentiment of the majority of the people 
carried him again into the "White House. Whatever might 
have been the capacity or incapacity of General Grant to direct 
the law. makers and give example to the laws, he sank into a 
relatively inconspicuous place almost at the moment of his 
second inauguration by the nearly simultaneous exposure of a 
series of old and new corruptions in congress which involved 
the Vice-President of the United States, the Chairman of the 
three leading committees of Congress, the head of the Protec- 



24 INTRODUCTORY. 

tion School in public life, half a dozen senators and as many 
members of the House, of both parties. 

The Vice-President departing and the new Vice-President 
acceding, both complicated in the celebrated Credit Mobilier 
corruption, confronted the public gaze as actors in the same 
ceremonial with President Grant, who was waiting to deliver 
, his second inaugural address to the public. Five senators, 
/ Bogy, Casserly, Clayton, Caldwell, and Pomeroy, were at that 
moment under accusation of purchasing their seats in the 
| Senate. Three judges of the United States Courts, Delahay, 
Sherman, andTuirrell, were under impeachment or imputation 
for complicity in the Credit Mobilier intrigue. The proudest 
foreheads in the national legislature were abashed. It was a 
melancholy and disgraceful spectacle, and it saddened the capi- 
tal and cast a cloud over all the country. 

The purpose of this book is to make Washington at the pres- 
ent day visible to voters, so that they can be guided in criticism 
upon abuses such as have been related. The course of the 
chapters is purposely made discursive so that the mind can 
be carried through a variety of scenes without flagging. 



CHAPTER II. 



HOW WASHINGTON CAME TO BE. 

The American Capital is the only seat of government of a 
first-class power which was a thought and performance of the 
Government itself. It used to be called, in the Madisonian era, 
" the only virgin Capital in the world." 

St. Petersburg was the thought of an Emperor, but the Cap- 
ital of Russia long afterward remained at Moscow, and Peter 
the Great said that he designed St. Petersburg to be only " a 
window looking out into Europe." 

Washington City was designed to be not merely a window, 
but a whole inhabitancy in fee simple for the deliberations of 
Congress, and they were to exercise exclusive legislation over 
it. So the Constitutional Convention ordained ; and, in lesi 
than seven weeks after the thirteenth state ratified the Consti- 
tution, the place of the Capital was designated by Congress to 
the Potomac River. In six months more, the precise territory,, 
on the Potomac was defined, under the personal eye of Washing- 
ton. 

The motive of building an entirely new city for the Fea al 
seat was not arbitrary, like Peter the Great's will with St. Peters- 
burg, nor fanciful, like that of the founder of Versailles... It 
was, like many of our institutions, an act of reflection suggested 
by such harsh experience as once drove the Papal head from 
Rome to Avignon, and, in our day, has withdrawn the French 
Government from Paris to Versailles. Four years before the 
Constitution was made'; Congress, while sitting at Philadelphia, 
— the largest city in the States, — had been grossly insulted by 
some of the unpaid troops of the Revolutionary War, and the 

25 



26 WASHINGTON. 

Pennsylvania authorities showed it no protection. Congress with 
commendable dignity, withdrew to Princeton, and there, in the 
collegiate halls, Eldridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, (whose 
remains now lie in the Congressional Cemetery of Washington,) 
moved that the buildings for the use of Congress be erected 
either on the Delaware or the Potomac. 

The State of Maryland was an early applicant for the perma- 
nent seat of the Government, and, after the result at Philadel- 
phia, hastened to offer Congress its Capitol edifice and other 
accommodations at Annapolis. Congress'accepted the invita- 
tion, and therefore, it was at Annapolis that Washington sur- 
rendered his commission, in the presence of that body. The 
career of Congress at Annapolis — which was a very perfect, tidy, 
and pretty miniature city — left a good impression upon the mem- 
bers for years afterwards, and was probably not without its influ- 
* ence in making Maryland soil the future Federal District. The 
growing " Baltimore Town," which was the first place in Amer- 
ica, after the revolution, to exhibit the Western spirit of ".driv- 
ing things," appeared in the lobby and prints, as an anxious 
competitor for the award of the Capital ; and the stimulation of 
that day bore fruits in the first and only admirable patriotic 
monument raised to Washington, while Washington City was 
yet seeking to survive its ashes. With the jealousy of a neigh- 
bor, the snug port and portage settlement of Georgetown opposed 
Baltimore, and directed attention to itself as deserving the Fed- 
/ eral bestowal, and counted, not without reason, upon the influ- 
ence of the President of the United States in its behalf. 

Many other places strove for the exaggerated honor and profit 
of the Capital, and it is tradition in half-a-dozen villages of the 
country, — at Havre de Grace, Trenton, Wrightsville, Pa ; Ger- 
mantown, Pa; Williamsport, Md ; Kingston, N. Y., and others — 
that the seat of government was at one time nearly their prize. 
Two points, however, gained steadily on the rest, — New York 
and some indefinite spot on the Potomac. The Eastern Con- 
gressmen, used to the life of towns, and little in love with what 
they considered the barbaric plantation life of the South, desired 



SELECTING THE SITE. 27 

to assemble amongst urbane comforts, in a place already estab- 
lished. Provincialism, prejudice, and avarice all played their 
part in the contest ; and, in that day of paper money, it was 
thought by many that the currency must follow the Capital. 
Hence, according to Jefferson, whose accounts on this head do 
not read very clearly, the financial problems of the time were 
offset by the selection of the Capital. Hamilton deferred to the 
South the Federal City, and had his Treasury policy adopted 
in exchange for it. When Jefferson and Hamilton came to 
write about each other, we are reminded of the adage that, 
when the wine is in, the wit is out ; but it is agreeable to reflect 
that they were both accordant with Washington on this point, 
and Jefferson had great influence over the young Capital's for- 
tunes. 

Congress made a reasonable decision on the subject. The 
comforts of a home were to be accorded at Philadelphia for ten 
years, to quiet Philadelphia, and meantime a new place was to 
be planned on the Potomac River, and public edifices erected 
upon it. The actual selection and plan were to be left to a com- 
mission selected by the President ; and thus the Federal City 
is an executive act, deliberated between Washington and private 
citizens. 

Mortifying, indeed, was the early work of making the Capi- 
tal City for the three Commissioners, whose ranks were renew- 
ed as one grew despondent and another enraged. 

It was July 16, 1790, that President Washington approved 
the bill of six sections which directed the acceptance of ten 
miles square " for the permanent seat of the Government," 
" between the mouths of the Eastern Branch and Conogo- 
cheague." The bill had become a law by a close vote in both 
Houses, and the Capital might have been placed, under the 
terms of it, at the Great Falls, or near the future battle-site of 
Ball's Bluff, or under the presence of the Sugar-Loaf Mountain, 
in the vale of the River Antietam, It is possible that Wash- 
ington himself, who held discretionary control over the Com- 
missioners, was not firmly of the opinion that the future city 



28 WASHINGTON. 

should stand on tide-water ; for he had previously written let- 
ters, in praise of the thrifty German country beyond the Mon- 
ocacy, in Maryland. But the matter of transportation and pas- 
sage was greatly dependent, in those days, upon navigable 
water-courses, and it is probable that, when the law passed, the 
spot of the city was already appointed. 

About five years before selecting the site for the Federal Cap- 
ital, Washington made a canoe upon the Monocacy River, and, 
descending to the Potomac, made the exploration of the whole 
river, from the mountains to tide-water,, in order to test the 
feasibility of lock and dam navigation. It is apparent, from 
his letters to Arthur Young, the Earl of Buchan, and others, 
that he was aware that the value of his estates on tide- 
water was declining, and lie wanted both the city and the canal 
contiguous to them. A noble man might well, however, have 
such an attachment to the haunts of his youth as to wish to see 
it beautified by a city. 

The bill was passed while Congress sat in New York ; six 
months later, on January 24, 1791, Washington, at Philadel- 
phia, made proclamation that, " After duly examining and 
weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the several situ- 
ations within the limits," he had thrown the Federal territory 
across the Potomac from Alexandria. 

The site of the new district was not entirely the wilderness 
it has been represented. The Potomac had been explored up 
to tiiis point, and as far as the Little Falls above, by Henry 
Fleet, one hundred and sixty years before. Fleet was the first 
civilized being who ever looked upon the site of Washington, 
and his manuscript story of ascending the river was never pub- 
lished until 1871. When Leonard Calvert arrived in the Poto- 
mac, in 1634, he went up to confer with this adventurous fur- 
trader, who had been many years in the country. 

" The place," said Fleet, evidently alluding to the contracted 
Potomac just above Georgetown, " is, without all question, the 
most healthful and pleasant place in all this country, and most 
convenient for habitation ; the air temperate in Summer and 



EARLY SETTLEMENT OP THE DISTRICT, 29 

not violent in Winter. It aboundetli with all manner of fish. 
The Indians in one night commonly will catch thirty sturgeons 
in a place where the river is not over twelve fathoms broad. 
And, for deer, buffaloes, bears, turkeys, the woods do swarm 
with them, and the soil is exceedingly fertile ; but, above this 
place, the country is rocky and mountainous, like Canada. 
* * * * We had not rowed above three miles but we might 
hear the Falls to roar." 

The early settlers of Maryland and Virginia kept to the nav- 
igable streams, and the earliest pioneers of the terrace country 
of Maryland were Scotch and Scotch-Irish, some Germans, and 
a few C atholics. 

Georgetown and Bellhaven (or Alexandria) were rather old 
places when the surveys were made for Washington City, and the 
former had been laid out fully forty years. The army of Gen- 
eral Bracldock had landed at Alexandria, and a large portion 
of his army marched from Rock Creek, as the infant George- 
town was then called, for Fredericktown and the Ohio. As 
early as 1763, the father of Gen. James Wilkinson purchased a 
tract of " five hundred acres of land on the Tyber-andthe Poto- 
mac, which probably comprehended the President's house ;" 
but the purchaser's wife objected to a removal to such an isola- 
ted spot, and the property was transferred to one Thomas Johns. 
In 1775, the young Wilkinson " shouldered a firelock at George- 
town, in a company commanded by a Rhode Island Quaker, 
Thomas Richardson," in which also the future Gen. Lingan 
was a subaltern, and this full company drilled for the Revolu- 
tionary struggle " on a small spot of table-land hanging over 
Rock Creek, below the upper bridge." As Wilkinson lived 
" thirty miles in the up-country, and was always punctual at 
parade," we may infer that Georgetown was the most consider- 
able place in all this quarter of Maryland. As early as 1779, 
William Wirt, whose parents resided at Bladensburg, went to " a 
Classical Academy at Georgetown ;" and he and others long 
bore remembrance of the passage of the French and American 
armies from north to south oyer the ferry at that place, of 



30 WASHINGTON. 

encampment at Kalorama Hill, and wagons loaded with specie 
crossing Rock Creek. Gen. Washington also designated 
Georgetown as one of the three great places of deposit for mil- 
itary stores ; and so important was Alexandria that Charles 
Lee, in his plan of treason, had proposed to cut the Northern 
. States from the South by occupying it with a permanent detach- 
ment of British troops, who should keep open the ferries between 
Alexandria and Annapolis, and, by menacing the rich farms of 
the German settlers in the up-country, compel them to starve 
out the Patriot armies. 

The port-town of Bladensburg was now just upon the decline, 
and the period had come when the interior parts of Maryland, 
Pennsylvania, and Virginia were showing forth their promises. 
Maryland had contained considerably more population than 
New York during the Revolutionary War, and we may conceive 
Georgetown and Alexandria to have been amongst the best grade 
of secondary towns at that period. They stood, as now, in -full 
sight of each other ; and the ridgy basin and lower- terraces 
between them, where the Federal City was to rise, presented a 
few good farms tilled by slaves, and was already marked for a 
couple of rival settlements before the Commissioners- adopted it. 

One of these prospective settlements was located near the 
present National Observatory, and took the name of Hamburg," 
afterward Funkstown, the other was projected near the present 
Navy- Yard, and was named after the proprietor of the estate, 
Carrollsburg. At any rate, there were enough people on the site 
to give the Commissioners a great deal of trouble with the; 
bickering and rapacity ; and it is likely that the idea got abroad 
in advance of the official choice, that here was to be the mighty 
Capital, and therefore lands and lots had been matters of con- 
siderable speculation. 

Few who had passed the ferry at Georgetown, and beheld the 
sight from the opposite hills of Virginia, could fail to have 
marked the breadth of the picture, and the strong colors in the 
ground and the environing wall of wooded heights, which rolled 
back against the distant sky, as if to enclose a noble arena of 



PICTURESQUENESS OP THE SITE. 31 

landscape, fit for the supreme deliberations of a continental 
nation. 

Dropping down from those heights by stately gradations, over 
several miles, to a terrace of hills in the middle ground, the 
foreground then divided, parallel with the eye, into a basin and 
a plateau. The plateau on the right showed one prominent but 
not precipitous hill, with an agreeable slope, at the back of 
which the Potomac reached a deep, supporting arm, while 
around the base meandered a creek that changed course when 
half-way advanced, and then flowed to the left, parallel with 
knolls, straight through the plain or basin, — defining to the 
inspired eye, as plainly as revelation, the avenues, grades, and 
commanding positions of a city. 

As such, Washington must have builded it up in his own 
formative mind ; for many a time he had passed it in review. 
He did not require to take note of the shiftless slave farms for 
which the ground had been already broken. Where yonder 
orchard grew, he saw the Executive Mansion, with its grounds 
extending down to the river-side cottage of that curmudgeon 
Scotch planter who was to be among the last to say words of 
impudence to the father ol the city. Where the pleasant hill 
swelled up to the clear skies in the night, Washington saw the 
spiritual outlines of the fair white Capitol, soon to be embodied 
there. Flowing down into the plain, and extending back over 
the hill of the Capital, he realized the lower and the upper city, 
on which a circle of villas in the higher background should 
some day look down ; and all the undulating space between the 
blue heights of Georgetown, from the river back to the table- 
land, should, by another century, smoke with population, wor- 
ship with bells, and march with music to honor the founder of 
this virgin Capital. 

Having named the three civil Commissioners to whom Con- 
gress — wiser than Congresses of a later period — committed the 
business of Capital-making, Washington set out from Philadel- 
phia, to confer with them on the spot. 

It is characteristic of Maryland roads in those days, in March, 



82 WASHINGTON. 

that the President drove down the Eastern shore of Maryland, 
instead- of crossing the Susquehanna, and was ferried over from 
Rockhall to Annapolis. At the latter place, he rested all Sat- 
urday, receiving hospitality ; and, on Sunday, continued his 
journey by Queen Ann to Bladensburg, where he dined and slept. 
Next morning he took breakfast at Suter's tavern, a one-story 
frame in Georgetown, — having occupied one week in fatiguing 
and perilous travel from Philadelphia. 

From the heights of Georgetown, Washington could look 
over the half-uncultivated tract, where the commissioners had 
plotted a part of their surveys for the Federal City, and Penn- 
sylvania Avenue was then a path through an older swamp from 
Georgetown to Carrollsburg. 

On Tuesday, a misty and disagreeable day, Washington rode 
out at seven o'clock, with David Stuart, Daniel Carroll, and 
Thomas Johnson, the three Commissioners, and with Mr. 
Andrew Ellicott and Major L'Enfant, who were surveying the 
grounds and projecting the streets of the city. " I derived no 
great satisfaction," says Washington, " from the review," and 
this we can readily suppose from, our present knowledge of 
what might be the condition of the soil of the District in the 
spring of the year, on a damp day, with the landholders of 
Georgetown and Carrollsburg contending with each other by 
the way, with, the numerous uninvited idlers pressing after, 
and the crude and tangled nature of the region. 

That night at six o'clock, Washington endeavored to con- 
trive an accommodation between the Georgetowners and 
Carrollsburgers, and it was probably at this time that he 
had reason to designate Davy Burns, the Scotch farmer and 
father to the future heiress of the city, as " The obstinate Mr. 
Burns." He dined that night at Colonel Forrest's, with a large 
company. The next day, the contending landholders agreed to 
Washington's suggestions, and entered into articles to surren- 
der half their lots when surveyed ; and, having given some of 
his characteristically precise instructions to the engineers and 
others, the President crossed the Potomac in the ferry-boat, 



MAJOR L'ENPANT'S PLAN. 33 

his equipage following, and dined at Alexandria, and slept that 
night at Mount Vernon, his homestead. 

There is a statue of Washington in one of the public circles 
of the Capital City, representing him on a terrified steed doing 
battle-duty ; but a local treatment of the subject would have 
been more touching and thoughtful ; the veteran of war and 
politics, worn down with the friction of public duty and rising 
party asperity, riding through the marshes and fields of Wash- 
ington, on the brink of his sixtieth year, to give the foundling 
government he had reared an honorable home. Could a finer 
subject appeal to the artist or to the municipality of Washing- 
ton ; the virgin landscape of the Capital, and this greatest of 
founders of cities since Romulus, surrounded by the two engi- 
neers, the three commissioners, and certain courteous denizens, 
and seeking to reason the necessities of the state and the pride 
of the country into the flinty soul of Davy Burns, that successor 
of Dogberry, — for he is said to have been a magistrate ? 

The new city was one of the plagues of General Washington 
for the remainder of his days, because he was very sensitive as 
to its success ; and it had to suffer the concentrated fire of crit- 
icism and witticism, domestic and foreign, as well as more 
serious financial adversity. He never beheld any of the glory 
of it ; and the fact that he had been responsible for it, and had 
settled it in the neighborhood of his estates, probably weighed 
somewhat upon 'his spirits in the midst of that light repartee 
which a grave nature cannot answer. Greater is he who keep- 
eth his temper than he who buildeth a city. That Washington 
did both well, the latter century can answer better than the 
former. The extravagant plan of Major L' Enfant has not been 
vindicated until now, when the habitations of one hundred 
thousand people begin to develop upon the plane of his magnifi- 
cence. The neighbors of General Washington had no capacity 
in that early day to congregate in cities, and the Federal site 
had to wait for a gregarious domination and a period of com- 
parative wealth. It is yet to be tested whether the orna- 
mentation of the city is to conduce to an equally Republican 
3 



K 



34 WASHINGTON. 

rule with that of more squalid times ; for, New York excepted, 
Washington is now the deadest city in America. 

The trustees of the Federal city in whom at law nominally 
reposed the conveyed property, were Thomas Beall and Joh*i 
M. Gautt. The chief owners of the site were David Burns, 
Samuel Davidson, Notley Young, and Daniel Carroll. 

The cost of the ground on which Washington City stands 
was truly insignificant as compared with the remarkable expen- 
ditures of the years 1871, '72, '73. 

The few property-holders agreed to convey to the government 
out of their farm-lands as much ground as would be required 
for streets, avenues, public-building-sites, reservations, areas, 
etc., and to surrender, also, one-half of the remaining land, to 
be sold by the United States as it might deem fit, — receiving, 
however, at the rate of twenty-five pounds per acre for the 
public grounds, but nothing for the streets. In other words, 
the government through its three commissioners, was to plot 
out the Federal City in the first place, delineating all the 
grounds required for buildings and reservations, and surveying 
the parts to be inhabited.- It was then to divide these inhab- 
itable lots equally between itself and the landholders, and sell 
its own lots when, and on what prices and terms, it pleased, 
and, out of the proceeds of such sales, to make its payments 
for the national grounds and reservations. 

In this way the government took seventeen 'great parcels of 
ground out of the general plan, such as now surround the 
Capitol, the President's House, etc., and the same amounted 
to five hundred and forty-one acres. At sixty-six dollars and 
sixty-six cents per acre, this yielded to the farm-holders thirty- 
six thousand ninety-nine dollars, — a very small sum indeed if 
we compute interest upon it, and subtract principal and inter- 
est from the present value of the ground. 

The. building lots assigned to the government numbered ten 
thousand one hundred and thirty-six. The amount of sales of 
these lots, up to the year 1834, was seven hundred forty-one 
thousand twenty-four dollars and forty-five cents, and an assess- 



AREA OF THE CITY. 35 

ment upon the unsold lots, made at that time, brought the 
government's share up to eight hundred fifty thousand dollars. 
Besides this handsome speculation, the State of Virginia voted 
to the government the sum of one hundred twenty thousand 
dollars, and the State of Maryland seventy-two thousand dol- 
lars, as a concession for planting the great city on their bor- 
ders. With equal courtesy, the government gave away a great 
many lots to such institutions as the Columbian and George- 
town Colleges, and the Washington and St. Vincents Orphan 
Asylums ; and it also squandered many lots upon less worthy 
solicitors, giving a depot site away to a railway company in 
1872, which was worth several hundred thousand dollars. 

In the entire area included under the above agreement, there 
were seven thousand one hundred acres, with a circumference 
of fourteen miles. The uneven plain of the city extended four 
miles along the river, and averaged three-quarters of a mile in 
breadth. The only streams were the Tiber, which divided the 
plain nearly equally ; James' Creek, emptying into the mouth 
of the Eastern Branch ; and Slash Run, emptying into Rock 
Creek. These streams still preserve the names they received 
long before the capital was pitched. The first dedicatory act 
was to fix the corner-stone at Jones' Point, near Alexandria. 
James Muir preached the sermon, Daniel Carroll and David 
Stuart placed the stone, and the Masons of Alexandria per- 
formed their mystic rites. 

A glimpse of the United States as it was at that day (1791) 
will complete the impression we may derive on thus revisiting 
the nearly naked site of the "Federal Seat." Virginia led all 
the states with nearly seven hundred fifty thousand people ; 
Pennsylvania and New York combined did little more than 
balance Virginia with four hundred thirty-four thousand and 
three hundred forty thousand respectively. North Carolina 
outweighed Massachusetts with three hundred ninety-four thou- 
sand to the Bay State's three hundred seventy-nine thousand. 
All the rest of New England displayed about six hundred thou- 
sand population. South Carolina and Georgia with three 



86 WASHINGTON. 

hundred thirty thousand people together, were inferior to 
Maryland and Delaware together by fifty thousand. There 
were only two "Western States, Kentucky and Tennessee, whose 
one hundred eight thousand people lacked seventy-five thousand 
of the population of New Jersey and altogether, four millions 
of Americans were watching with various human expressions 
the puzzle of the capital town. Such was the showing of the cen- 
sus of 1790, but by the year 1800, when the infant city was 
occupied by its government, the country was one third greater 
in inhabitants. It was not until 1820 that any state passed 
Virginia, but in 1830 both New York and Pennsylvania had 
bidden her good-bye. 

The capital was staked out the year after Franklin's death, 
thirty years before the death of George III, in Goethe's fifty- 
second year and Schiller's thirty-second, sixteen years before 
the "first steamboat, tw«i*fears before Louis XVI was guillo- 
tined, when Louis Phillipe was in his nineteenth year, while 
Count Rochambeau was commander of the French army, two 
years after Robespierre became head deputy, five years after the 
death of Frederick the Great, while George Stephenson was a 
boy of ten, the year subsequent to the death of Aden Smith, 
the year John Wesley and Mirabeau died, two years before 
Brissot was guillotined, in Napoleon's twenty-second year, 
the year before Lord Nott died, the year Morse was born and 
Mirabeau was buried, in the third year of the London Times, 
just after Lafayette had been the most powerful man in France, 
three years before the death of Edward Gibbon, while Warren 
Hastings was on trial, in Burke's sixty-first year and Fox's 
forty-second and Pitt's thirty-second, three years after the death 
of Chatham, in the Popedom of Pius VI, while Simon Bolivar 
was a child eight years old, the year Cowper translated Homer, 
and in Burns' prime. 



CHAPTEE III. 



THE CIVIL VS. THE CONGEESSIONAL SERVICE. 

What part of the government most requires correction, the 
executive or the legislative ? 

I do not think it will be a hasty answer to give the palm for 
corruption, looseness, and disorder to Congress. Perhaps it 
it would not be saying too much to add that this has been the 
fact ever since the government went into operation in 1789. 

We came into the world with our teeth cut so far as party spirit 
went. The American people have changed much less since 
the colonial days than one would think, considering the enor- 
mous infusion of European material amongst us. In. several 
of the colonies Contests between the legislative power and the 
royal or provincial gove-rnors were rife for half a century before 
our common patriotic insurrection. Massachusetts, Vermont, 
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Car- 
olinas bore the same internal political aspect twenty years 
before Lexington that they did twenty years after Yorktown. 
The politician is almost invariably identical with the congress- 
man. He reflects in the government the condition of the 
society, and particularly the character of the fraction which 
delegated him. In some cases he may be a commanding, sug- 
gestive spirit, with sufficient estate or personal following to 
impress himself upon the day and carry messages ahead of the 
society which he represents or the Congress to which he comes. 
But the representative system is truly so denominated in that 
the average Congressman lives near the level of the con- 
stituency, and in too many cases his real morality is beneath 
it. A very small proportion of voters do the work of the con- 

3T 



38 CIVIL VS. CONGRESSIONAL SERVICE. 

stituency, and it is to the interest of the politician that this 
number be as small as convenient. His personal faction is 
generally made up of those who represent the positive wants 
of the constituency, in his day, and such elements of the con- 
stituency never propose to give the nation as much as they can 
take out of its common hopper. Hence what ought to be a 
deliberative body of the whole country is a succession of indi- 
viduals bent on avaricious errands. One wants a new section 
added to the tariff and a gorgeous post-office building to orna- 
ment his principal town. Another is in pursuit of a railroad 
project which it is to the interest of a few rich men to have, and 
these in turn have got control of the county papers and give 
the intention the appearance of a public want. A third lives 
in a ship-building district where there are a great many hulls 
lying up with no place for them on the high seas, and it is an 
object of this Congressman to set back the maritime ideas of 
the world so that those ■ vessels can recover supremacy, or if 
this cannot be done the Congressman is bound to make the 
whole nation in some way pay back to the vessel-owners in his 
constituency as much money as if ,they were fairly earning it. 
A fourth Congressman is desperately bent upon bringing into 
the Union the territory adjacent to his own state, with the 
promise that if he succeed he or his brother-in-law (for brothers- 
in-law constitute a formidable kinship in our country) will )>e 
sent to the Senate from the new State. A fifth Congressman 
has no other real constituency than a bank or a coalition of 
contractors in public works. A sixth comes from a district 
where some one nationality, as the German, or Scandinavian, 
or Irish prevails Over all others, and he demagogues to this 
alone. In some of the larger cities, where there may be two, 
three, four, or five Congressmen a jjool is made by the municipal 
ring regnant, and the seats at Washington are given out for 
money, friendship, admiration, gratitude, or in deference to some 
class, national, or religious influence. Of course the represen- 
tative system is not faulty in any of these cases, for what sends 
the Congressman to Washington generally directs attention 



CIVIL VS. CONGRESSIONAL SERVICE. 39 

and often enterprise in the constituency. The consequence is 
that the American Congress, except in great national emergen- 
cies, is an aggregation of selfish atoms. The larger operations 
of the country, which are conducive to its ideal and serious 
glory, are every day speared through and through by some- 
body who would spare no energy to pluck enough from the 
common purse to ornament his particular district. 

Mr. Holman, of Indiana, gave an instance of this at the close 
of the last Congress when he rose in his place and objected to 
an appropriation to make observations on the transit of Venus 
in the year 1874. Mr. Holman, however, was animated by a 
narrow desire to save money to his tax paying constituency. 
What concerned everybody, and learning in particular, was of 
no concern to his voters as he had apprehended them. But 
had his little town of Aurora been omnibussed with a dozen other 
towns for a grand Marine Hospital or District -Court building, 
Mr. Holman would not have raised his voice, even had he 
known that there were buildings already more than sufficient 
for the purpose ; the country newspapers of both parties would 
pounce upon him instantly and demand that he be sac- 
rificed because he would not be a party to plundering 
the general treasury in aid of the vanity of his neighbor- 
hood. Where have we an unselfish constituency in the United 
States ? And how many broad-minded men of state can exist 
in Congress under the nature of American constituencies ? The 
fault is more than half with the constituency, and the course 
of the constituency, as we have always had it in America, may 
be called provincialism. To four-fifths of all' our journals pro- 
vincialism sets the key. In the same proportion runs criticism 
on public affairs at the fireside circle, in the average pulpit, and 
in the town-meeting. 

The few institutions which directly appertain to the Gen- 
eral Government, and are the property, more or less directly, of 
the whole nation, have been the subject of attack ever since 
the Government was instituted ; — West Point, the Naval School, 
the Regular Army, Washington City, the National Observatory, 



40 CIVIL VS. CONGRESSIONAL SERVICE. 

a responsible and durable civil service, the public navy yards, 
the public officers which do not lie within the constituency, and 
all" such organic matters. Private ship-builders inevitably 
denounce the building of naval vessels in the public navy yards, 
although it would seem to every reasoning man that the officers 
who were to sail the ships and trust their lives to them and 
fight with them ought to be the best constructors. But woe to 
the Congressman from the banks of the Delaware, the Kenne- 
bec, or the East River who casts his vote in favor of the per- 
formance of this general function by the legitimate power. As 
a consequence we have a navy that decays every six years, 
built at the private ship-yards of green timber with hasty car- 
pentry and all the appurtenances of a job. In the height of the 
war a ship-yard lobby crowded Congress, and everybody remem- 
berc how a flighty private engineer at Brooklyn had sufficient 
influence to compel a vessel constructed at the Government 
yard to be tied at a wharf beside his own and the revolutions 
of the engine in the two vessels counted as a determination of 
speed. That vessel with which the private ship-yard challenged 
the Government boat to a stationary trial of speed is now a fish- 
factory near Greenport, Long Island, and was sold for little 
more than the price of a laborer's frame dwelling. And yet 
at the time her contractors called everybody in the opposition 
atrocious names, his Congressmen stood up for this experimental 
constituent against all the naval engineers in the world, and the 
Government was plundered of ' the money as truly as if the 
builder of the ship had been a traitor to his country and had 
sunk an American vessel on the seas. 

For reasons such as I have mentioned Congress and the 
Bureau officers of the Government . have produced very unlike 
exponents. A Bureau officer, by the nature of his duties, grows 
conservative, methodical, and reticent, and sometimes takes upon 
himself a natural dignity highly offensive to the Congressman 
who rushes up with a letter from Jones, who has the chief saw- 
mill in the Wabash district and demands within five minutes 
to know some secret, the revelation of which might be a breach 



ACHIEVEMENTS \0F GOVERNMENT CLERKS. 41 

of official etiquette, or which at any rate, should require a 
decent consideration before the exposure be made. 

In the Bureaus of the United States are some of the most 
accomplished officials to be found ill the Governments of civil- 
ization. It is really extraordinary i ) see how the old fashioned 
salaries will retain men of often exceptional rank in the public 
service. This is the case at present as truly as it was at the 
beginning of the Government, which in the hands of private 
inventors would become monopolies and used to make the State 
pay tribute. The Patent office of the United States was first 
organized by a one thousand five hundred dollar clerk, — the \ 
same Dr. Thornton who drew the elevations of the present cap- ' 
ital and impressed the form of it upon the whole history of 
America. / 

In the Coast survey a mere pressman invented the impOrtiie ■ 
process of separating the steel and copper plates by an elecftts 
galvanic deposit of nitrate of silver, so as to give the fines, 
impression. The establishment of the National Observatory 
was a suggestion of a clerk, Lambert, who received but ' one 
thousand five hundred dollars, for laboring nearly twenty years, 
making frequent memorials, lobbying socially and taking the 
longitude of the Capitol as early as 1822. The Observatory 
itself might never have come into existence but for the action ot 
a naval lieutenant, now Eear Admiral Goldsborough, who smug- 
gled into existence under the name of a depot of charts and 
instruments, the nucleus ot the present institution, which is 
comparable to Greenwich, and is now being provided with a 
refractory telescope superior in size to any in the world. But 
even here the contractor makes his appearance, for this telescope 
must be of American manufacture, although the object-glass 
had to be cast in the rough at Birmingham, England. The 
publisher of the Congressional Globe, — the man who made the 
enterprise a success, self sustaining, and kept it in existence 
for a quarter of a century — was John C. Rives, who was merely 
a clerk in the treasury at one thousand two hundred dollars 



42 CIVIL VS. CONGRESSIONAL SERVICE. 



/ 



salary when Francis P. Blair, Six, — who had no business man- 
agement adequate to the task^-discovered him by accident 

The Post Office Department as we see it in our time energized 

and so comprehensive and thorough that if our paper comes 

three hours late we make complaint, was the development of 

the clerical force and owes its vigor to Amos Kendall who was 

successively country postmaster, clerk, and auditor. In the 

Capitol building there is an assistant clerk with a salary of 

three thousand dollars a year, who has collated, edited, and 

indexed, and made a dissertation on parliamentary law which 

has become the standard book on this subject throughout the 

United States. 

1 Such are examples of a few quiet men in the public service 

Wi vhose names come to mind. In these Departments it may be 

" erj; i that honesty is the rule and intrigue the exception. It is 

lnnu^ £ rue ^ ia t even with the present grade of salaries many of 

y a Jnese men satisfy their wants, educate their families and gener- 

c ally die possessed of some little property which will enable their 

families to live for a time without straits. The little buggy or 

carry-all and pony of the clerk is nearly as common in our streets 

as the coach and pair of the gorgeous Senator whp.has just struck 

oil or watered his Galena. 

The general rise of real estate and the increase of local taxa- 
tion are fast breaking up American homes, and the era is not 
distant when life in apartments must be the rule of American as 
of European cities for people of moderate incomes. The clerk 
of the class I have named often submits to what is now called 
the privations of country-life in order to keep his roof-tree sep- 
arate and have his family around him. On the heights back of 
the city is a settlement of cozy cottages, many of them built of 
the old hospital lumber which was plentiful here just after the 
war, and this village, which bears the name of Mount Pleasant, 
goes by the name of Clerks ville,— a pretty word, and if public 
service were held in the consideration that it might be,. would 
politics allow, the name would convey a pleasant sense to the 
ear and the mind. Another town has sprung up across the 



■MR. BANCROFT CORRECTED. 43 

Eastern Branch which is set down as Howardsville, named after 
General Howard. Here also quite a number of clerks have 
betaken themselves, and it is agreeable when one rides out in 
the morning to see them quietly trudging along at eight o'clock 
to walk three miles to the Treasury. One of these Howardsville 
clerks has already got a name in American" historical literature." 
I mean Edward D. Neill, the author of the History of Minnesota, 
and to the credit of Senator Ramsay — our present consul at 
the city of Dublin — while President's clerk and chaplain at 
Washington and living on the grounds across the Eastern 
branch Mr. Neill collated from original papers the colonial his- 
tory of Maryland under the name of " Terra Mariae," and a his- 
tory of the London Company, which answers the same purpose 
for Virginia. While in Dublin he has published from entirely 
original data " the English Colonization of America during the 
Seventeenth Century." This latter book in several respects 
shows Mr. Bancroft and the more presumptuous historians of 
the country to be at fault as in tjie case of Pocahontas, whom 
Bancroft describes as having been wedded by " an amiable enthu- 
siast who daily, hourly, and, as it were, in his very sleep had 
heard a voice crying in his ears that he should strive to make 
this young Indian maiden a Christian." So says our minister 
at Berlin, — but our consul at Dublin shows, from the pages of 
the London company's transactions, that Rolfe was a married 
man when he wedded Pocahontas, and that after his death 
there was a white widow and her children besides the son he 
had by Pocahontas asking support from the Company. In view 
of this development it is somewhat amusing to see one of the 
great panels in the rotunda of the Capitol covered with a depic- 
tion of the second act of matrimony by this apostolic bigamist. 
Whatever corruption exists in the Bureaus at Washington 
will be found to be sustained by those arms of the service which 
come most frequently into contact with the politicians and Con- 
gressmen. The Land office and the Interior Department con- 
tain many efficient men, but the belief is current that railroad 
Congressmen have corrupted some of these, and when the first 



44 CIVIL VS. CONGRESSIONAL SERVICE. 

shilling passes stealthily into the official's palm half the journey 
to vice is made already. In the Treasury Department corrup- 
tion exists almost wholly where Congressmen control the appoint- 
ments, as in the outer revenue offices and in the Custom Houses 
of the sea-board cities. But in the Treasury building at Wash- 
ington there is an appearance of industry, method, and order 
which disarms suspicion, and when the visitor becomes acquainted 
with many of the heads of bureaus he will discover men of 
remarkable faculties and acquirements receiving quite ordinary 
but still sufficient salaries. The venerable Treasurer of the 
United States, General F. E. Spinner, preserves the respect 
even of Congress to such an extent that when defalcations have 
occurred in his office they have been made good in the appro- 
priation bills without party division and without lobbying. 

The Comptroller of the currency at present, whose name is 
an antique combination — John Jay Knox — is an official of the 
very highest grade, and although a young man, is perhaps as 
fully informed in monetary ^questions as any authority in an 
equally responsible position in any contemporary government. 
While Deputy Comptroller, with a salary of three thousand 
dollars, he prepared a mint and coinage bill which was a mar- 
vel of exactness, research, and perspicuity, and he was able, 
notwithstanding fierce local opposition, to make it a law of the 
country, so that the national mint will hereafter be directed 
from the Capital, and not made an ornamental station on a 
side-track for the provincial benefit of Philadelphia. Mr. 
Knox was also cashier of a bank when, perceiving opportunities 
for a more influential and intellectual career at Washington, 
he resigned and took a subordinate position in the Comptroller's 
Bureau. He had an indirect influence in bringing out the 
State of Virginia under good government, by making Gilbert 
Walker, his class-fellow at college, President of the Norfolk 
National Bank, a place which brought Walker forward and 
enabled him to make the race for governor with success. Mr. 
Knox's predecessor was loose or unfortunate in the selection 
of his examiners, and some ugly developments were made after 



CIVIL VS. CONGRESSIONAL SERVICE. 45 

the failure of some of the banks. When Mr. Hulburd retired 
a regular mob race was made for the vacant position about 
which there should not have been a particle of hesitation in the 
President's mind, for the next in succession was known to be 
the best qualified of all the candidates. However, civil service 
prevailed in this instance, and the new Comptroller soon demon- 
strated his executive courage by sending his examiner to inspect 
the affairs of all the banks in the District of Columbia which, 
owing their charters to congress, came within the sphere of his 
administration; showed that the Freedmen's Bank, which 
stands at the apex of the system of savings banks organ- 
ized for the benefit of the emancipated laborers of the 
South, had been squandering its money on mortgages around 
the capital city to such an extent that but seven thousand dol- 
lars surplus out of three or four million appeared on its balance 
sheet. The ignorance of the^ majority of the depositors and the 
distance of the branch banks from the central bank prevented 
a run on this institution, but the warning was not without its 
lesson. Meantime a savings bank kept by a private person 
named Roth was shown, to the astonishment of everybody, to 
possess above one million dollars deposits and little or no sur- 
plus. The report of the examiner brought the town around the 
ears of this money-lender, and in the space of two days nearly 
three thousand dollars were drawn out of its coffers by the 
depositors and he had to hypothecate his bonds, mortgages, 
etc., to meet the run. This prompt exhibition of vigilance and 
discipline might have tumbled Mr. Knox out of his place had 
it not been that his social independence had meantime become 
sudh that his nerve was not that of a starveling. Had he delayed 
until some of these saving institutions, keeping their true con- 
dition a secret, and playing Wall Street with their deposits, 
fail|ed and so started a series of explosions to consume the earn- 
ings of the poor and make a financial panic, he could hardly 
have been more hounded than by these pawnbrokers who abhor 
in general anything of investigation or exposure The savings 
banks of the United States have more capital than the National 



46 CIVIL VS. CONGRESSIONAL SERVICE. 

Banks of the country. Thus it would seem that the poor are 
stronger than the rich but unfortunately the rich obtain all the 
influence which the capital of the poor can give by its use. The 
Comptroller of the currency has uniformly discouraged the 
attachment of a savings department to national banks, and he 
is of the opinion that the principle of savings banks is much 
abused in all parts of the country and particularly in the West, 
where the most reckless operators often avail themselves of the 
enormous savings of the poor by means of charters lobbied through 
the legislatures or brought on the street. Some of the savings 
banks of New England are quite differently managed, and Mr. 
Knox instances one, I think at Newburyport, which had four 
million dollars deposits but was so well methodized and in such 
conservative management that it cost only about two thousand 
dollars a year to do all the clerical work of the bank. 



CHAPTEE IV. 



PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 

According to the whole of many authorities and a part of 
all, the city of Washington itself was a scheme and the public 
buildings severally were sown in Corruption. That they have - 
been raised in incorruption, however, is clear to the cheerful, 
patriotic mind; for the Capitol is the ornament in some manner 
of nearly every American dwelling. The White House is the 
most beautiful building in the world to a politician aspiring 
toward it. Thousands of people would be glad to get as much 
as a hand in the Treasury or even a name in the Pension office. 

These buildings make a continuous romance in respect to 
their design, construction, and personal associations. In their 
day they were esteemed the noblest edifices on the continent, 
and educed praise even from such censorious strangers as Mrs. 
Trollope. To this day the Capitol and President's house 
remain as they were exteriorly, the same in style and propor- 
tions, and the additions to the Capitol have been made consistent 
with the old elevation. The public is better satisfied with the 
Capitol from year to year, and many men of culture and travel 
even prefer the old freestone original edifice to the spacious 
and costly marble wings. The President's House has lost 
somewhat of its superiority as a residence, owing to the pro- 
gress made in household comforts during the last half century, 
but it is still admired by the visitor for the extent, harmony, 
and impressiveness of its saloons. Both buildings and the city 
as well invite at this day our inquisitiveness as to how the 
young republic became posssesed of architects and engineers of 
capacity equal to such ample and effective constructions. 

47 



48 PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 

The material for this inquiry is to be found in the journals 
and letter books of the early commissioners of the Federal City, 
which are kept on the crypt floor of the Canitol and are partly 
indexed. The pergonal story of the eany architects must be 
obtained by family tradition and partly by recollection. The 
printed documents of congress continue the story of those con- 
structions to our own day, but many of them are rare and some 
missing, because the Capitol has been three times devastated 
by fire which twice chose the library as the point ol attack. 

Let us first note the lives of the planners of the city itself. 

They assembled at Georgetown with tents, horses, and 
laborers, and proceeded to plot the city upon the site, while the 
commissioners, acting for the executive, raised and supplied 
the money, dealt with the owners of the ground and negotiated 
with quarrymen, carters, and boat owners. Every step was a 
matter of delicacy, and conflicts were frequent between all par- 
ties. A high degree of personal independence prevailed in the 
late colonies and in military, political, and professional life, 
amounting in many cases to sensitiveness and jealousy. 

The commissioners had little consonance of temperament 
with the professional men, many of whom.were.* foreigners, and 
both had reason to dislike the natives who began by craving the 
boon of the city, and ended by showing all the forms of queru- 
lousness and discontent which rise from excited avarice. 

First in consideration is the man out of whose mind and art 
were drawn the design of Washington city as we find it still. 
1 . r J Peter Charles L'Enfant was born in «France,£7557 and made a 
17 • Lieutenant in the French provincial forces. Touched at an 
early period in the American revolution with the spirit of the 
American Colonies and the opportunities afforded in the new 
world for a young officer and engineer he tendered his services 
in the latter capacity to the United States in the autumn of 1777. 
He received his wish and the appointment of Captain of Engi- 
neers February 18, 1778. At the siege of Savannah he was 
wounded and left on the field of battle. After c ire he took a 
position in the army under the immediate eye f Washington 



l'enfant's biography. 49 

and was promoted Major of Engineers May 2, 1873. Hence 
the rank with which he descends to history. 

At the close of ft°- Revolution L'Enfant commended himself 
to Jefferson who almost monopolized t^e artistic taste and 
knowledge of the first administration, and as the project for a 
Federal city developed L'Enfant was brought into very close 
relations with President Washington. The artistic and the 
executive mind rarely run parallel, however, and very soon 
"Washington heard with indignation that L'Enfant, enamored 
of his plan of the city, had refused to let it be used by the Com- 
missioners as an incitement and directory to purchasers. The 
excuse of L'Enfant appears to have been that if acquainted with 
tho plan speculators would build up his finest avenues with 
unsuitable structures. Washington's letter displays both the 
ability and weakness of his architect and engineer : 

" It is much to be regretted," he says, " that men who pos- 
sess talents which fit them for peculiar purposes should almost 
invariably be under the influence of an untoward disposition * *. 
I have thought that for such employment that he is now engaged 
in for prosecuting public works and carrying them into effect. 
Major L'Enfant was better qualified than any one who had come 
within my knowledge in this country or indeed in any other 
I had no doubt at the same time, that this was the light in which 
he considered himself." 

This letter was written in the autumn of 1791, eight months 
after Jefferson instructed L'Enfant as follows : 

" You are directed to proceed to Georgetown where you will 
find 'Mr. Ellicott in making a survey and map of the Federal 
territory." Jefferson then distributed the responsibility by pre- 
scribing as L'Enfant' s duty " to draw the site of the Federal 
town and buildings." He was to begin at the Eastern branch 
and proceed upwards, and the word " Tyber " is used thus early 
in the history of the city as applying to the celebrated creek of 
that name, long afterwards the eye-sore of the city. 

As between t r ie immortal patron of the new city and the poor 
military artist posterity will expend no sympathies upon L'Enfant, 
4 



50 PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 

but there was probably a provincial hardness amongst the" Com- 
missioners and a want of consideration for the engineers, for 
even,.-" Ellicott," also a man of uncommon talents in his way 
and of a more placid temper, was incensed at the slights put 
upon him. 

Jefferson wrote to L'Enfant Nov. 21, 1791, that he must not 
delay the engraving of his map by over nicety and thus spoil 
the sale of town lots, which it appears brought as good prices 
without the map as with it ; for he had written in October that 
" the sales at Georgetown were few but good." They averaged 
two thousand four hundred the acre. 

The Map was not produced, however, and his appeals over the 
heads of the Commissioners on points of difference were decided 
against the artist. His task lasted but one year and was 
abruptly terminated March 6th, 1792, as the following letter of 
Jefferson to the Commissioners shows : 

" It having been found impracticable to employ Major L'Enfant 
about the Federal city in that degree of subordination which 
was lawful and* proper, he has been notified that his services 
are at an end. It is now proper that he should receive the 
reward of his past services and the wish that he should have 
no just cause of discontent suggests that it should be liberal. 
The President thinks of two thousand five hundred dollars or three 
thousand dollars, but leaves the determination to you. Ellicott 
is to go on and finish laying off the plan on the ground and sur- 
veying and plotting the district." 

L' Enfant' s reputation and acquaintance were such that he 
might have done the new city great injury by taking a position 
to its detriment, and Washington wrote that "the enemies of 
the enterprise will take the advantage of the retirement of 
L'Enfant to trumpet the whole as an abortion." It appears, 
however, that L'Enfant was loyal to the government and the 
city, for he lived on the site and in the neighborhood all his days, 
and several times afterwards came under the notice of the exec- 
utive and was a baffled petitioner before Congress. 

We hear of him in 1794 in the public employment as Engi- 



\ 



l'enfant's biography. 51 

neer at Fort Mifflin below Philadelphia and after a long lapse 
as declining the Professorship of Engineers at West Point, July, 
1812. 

Christian Hines, referred to elsewhere, told me that he had 
seen Major L'Enfant many a time wearing a green surtout and 
never appearing in a change of clothes, walking across the com- 
mons and fields followed by half a dozen hunting dogs. Mr. 
Hines reported with some of his company to L'Enfant at Fort 
Washington in 1814 to do duty, and that officer, who was In 
temporary command, filled him a glass of wine in his old broadly 
hospitable way and told him what to do. 

The author of the plan of the city led a long and melancholy 
career about Washington and died on the farm of Mr. Digges in 
Prince George's County, about eight miles from the Capital he 
planned. The Digges family were allied to the Carrolls of Dud- 
dington, and had pity upon the military gentleman who had been 




- - 

, . - 

' ..' " ■:■■ 

.. ■ .r; .;-.- - -; - ; \ - ■-'■. ■'■■■■ 



■■■■ - - '.■-■■ 

~~~ ^"^ »BSllIfH|j I BB1I 

MAJOR L'ENFAJJT'S RESTING PLACE — THE DIGGES FARM. 

at once so capable, so willful, and so unfortunate. The banker 
Corcoran has a distinct remembrance of L'Enfant as he lived, a 
rather seedy, stylish old man with a long blue coat buttoned 
up on his breast and a bell-crowned hat, a little moody and 
lonely like one wronged. He wrote much and left many papers 
which Mr. Wyeth of Washington told me he had inspected. 
He would not abate a particle iof his claim against the Govern- 
ment, being to the last as tenacious of the point of pride as when 
he refused his maps to the Commissioners to be the accessory 
of the auctioneer and the lot speculator. The Digges farm was 



52 PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 

purchased by the banker, George Riggs, Esq., many years after 
L'Enfant's death, and a superb stone mansion and a chapel for 
worship were erected upon the pleasant hill where the architect 
of the ruling city sleeps. In the garden planted by the Digges 
family there had been one of those private burial grounds not 
uncommon in Maryland and quite common to Catholic families. 
Amongst the people who closed his eyes he was laid to rest in 
June, 1825, at the age of seventy. Mr. Riggs says that subse- 
quently a member of the Digges family committed suicide and the 
negroes buried this person cursuise to L'Enfant's body. The 
leading members of the family were disinterred afterward and 
the old soldier left there nearly alone. Some measures were 
suggested for giving him a monument at the time I made these 
inquiries. 

L'Enfant's judgment was not equal to his imagination, but 
he had taste, knowledge, and amplitude, and with a richer 
patron than the American Nation might have made a more 
sounding fame. His plan of the capital city is gradually vin- 
dicating itself as the magnificent distances fill up with buildings, 
and the recent happy expedient of parking the streets has made it 
possible to pave them all without extraordinary expense. Such 
as "it is, the city is irrevocably a part of his fame. One cannot 
fail to see that he drew it from the study of LeNotre's work in* 
the city of Versailles and in the forests contiguous to Paris, 
where aisles, routes, etc., meet at broad open carrefours and a 
prospect or bit of architecture closes each avenue. Washing- 
. ton city in its grand plan is French ; in its minor plan Quaker. 
It is the city of Philadelphia griddled across the city of Ver- 
sailles. Anybody who will look at the design of the house 
which L'Enfant built for Robert Morris at Philadelphia after ho 
was discharged from the public service, — that house which so 
far exceeded the estimates, that it was pulled down after the 
ruin of Morris and the materials made a quarry of — will 
observe that it is very much in the style of Mansard and the 
French architects of the seventeenth contury. Thus the French 
alliance with America brought to our shores the draughtsman 



l'enfant's quarrels with the commissioners. 53 

of the government city, and few men have had it in their power 
to define so absolutely a stage for historical and biographical 
movement. As L'Enfant made the city it remains, with little 
or no alteration. And his misfortunes and poverty contrasted 
with his noble opportunity will always classify him Avith the 
brotherhood of art and genius, and make him remembered as 
long as the city shall exist. 

The first quarrel which L'Enfant had with the commission- 
ers related to the destruction of a mansion belonging to one of 
the proprietors of the ground, the aged Daniel Carroll, who had 
begun to build a great brick house which he called " Dudding- 
ton," in the middle of New Jersey Avenue right under the 
Capitol. As this house embarrassed the engineer's much 
beloved plan and assumed for itself the importance of a public 
edifice, L'Enfant issued an order for its demolition. "The com- , 
missioners protested but the artist gave orders to his Lieuten- 
ant, Isaac Roberdeau, to pull down the structure in his absence 
while he meantime should be at Acquia Creek where he had 
leased the quarries of Brent and Gibson. Roberdeau was 
stopped by Carroll who sent a courier to Annapolis to get an 
injunction, but seeing the speed the Frenchman was making in 
the interval Carroll served a local magistrate's warrant upon 
him. When L'Enfant returned and found his orders unfulfilled 
he quietly organized a gang of laborers and in the evening these 
set to work and reduced the presumptuous edifice with a hearty 
diligence which led to a shower of complaints from both pro- 
prietors and commissioners. Carroll proposed to sue L'Enfant ; 
Roberdeau was discharged and the artist in chief kept his place 
only two months longer. The Administration directed Dud- 
dington House to be reconstructed as it was before but in 
another spot, and there it remains to-day, a grim old relic sur- 
rounded with a high brick wall and a park of forest trees. 

Andrew Ellicott, the consulting and practical engineer of the 
new city, was a native of Bucks county, Pennsylvania, where 
his English father emigrated in 1730. He and two brothers 
had moved from Pennsylvania in wagons in 1772 and started 



54 PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 

the town of Ellicott's Mills and were promoters of the fortunes 
of Baltimore and enterprising merchants, manufacturers, agri- 
culturists, and inventors. They were the fathers of good road 
building, of iron rolling and copper working in Maryland, and 
inventors of many useful things, such as the wagon-brake. 
Andrew Ellicott was in the prime of life, — thirty-seven years 
old, — when he rode out with Washington to inspect the embryo 
city. Of all the party he was the most intellectual unless we 
except L'Enfant ; for although a Quaker he had commanded a 
battalion of jnilitia in the revolution, and it gives us a wonder- 
ing insight into the resources of the American Colonial mind 
to find that this companion of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and 
Washington learned the elements of what he knew at the little 
Maryland milling place he established. 

EllicotHiad surveyed portions of the boundaries of New York, 
Pennsylvania, and Virginia, executed a topographical map of 
the country bordering on Lake Erie, and made the first accurate 
measurement of Niagara Falls. He had besides been a member 
• of the Maryland Legislature. His more tractable and accom- 
modating disposition secured him the honor of finishing the 
work of L'Enfant, and it appears that he was paid while on this 
service five dollars a day and his expenses. 

In 1792 he became Surveyor General of the United States, 
laid out the towns of Erie, Warren, and Franklin in Pennsyl- 
vania, and constructed Fort Erie. In .\96 he determined the 
boundary line separating the republic fronMie Spanish posses- 
sions, and for many years subsequently wa^ Secretary of the 
Pennsylvania state land office. His acquaintance and corre- 
spondence were with the most eminent people of his day in 
America and Europe, and in 1812 he was made Professor of 
Mathematics at West Point, where he died August 28, 1820, at 
the age of sixty-six. One of his family, Mr. Jos. C. G. Kennedy 
was Superintendent of the United States census in 1860, and 
is now a resident of Washington. Amongst the assistants to 
run the lines of the new city was one man entitled to the future 
consideration of all his race, Benjamin Banneker, a negro. 



PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 55 

He was at this time sixty years of age and a native of Ellicott's 
Mills and the protege" of the family of Andrew Ellicott. He is 
represented to have been a large man of noble appearance 
with venerable white hair, wearing a coat ot superfine drab 
broad cloth and a broad brimmed hat, and to have resembled 
Benjamin Franklin. He was honored by the commissioners 
with a request to sit at their table, but his unobtrusive nature 
made him prefer a separate table. He was not only consider- 
ately cared for by these gentlemen, but Mr. Jefferson with his 
broad encouragement for learning and ability had praised an 
almanac he constructed, and the black man's proficiency in the 
exact sciences had given him a general reputation. He was 
sometimes too fond of a glass, but made it a matter of pride 
that at Washington he had carefully avoided temptation. 
Banneker died in 1804, and his grave at Ellicott's Mills is with- 
out a mark. 

Thus much for the makers of the plan of the city. The trials 
and quarrels of the architects will be found even more romantic. 

With all his discouragements concerning it Washington kept 
up the gleam of belief in the fortunes of his namesake city and 
called attention to it in letters to the Earl of Buchan and his 
old neighbor Mrs. S. Fairfax. To the latter, who was in England, 
he wrote the year before his decease : 

" A century hence, if this country keeps united, it will pro- 
duce a city though not as large as London yet of a magnitude 
inferior to few others in Europe." 

Three quarters of that century have expired and Washington 
is a city of one hundred and fifty thousand people. By the year 
1900 this should increase to two hundred and fifty thousand. 
At the time Washington wrote, London had eight hundred 
thousand inhabitants. 



CHAPTER Y. 



THE ARCHITECTS OF THE CAPITOL AND THEIR FEUDS. 

The first architect of the Capitol in the proper sense of a pro- 
fessional man was Stephen S. Hallet, whose name is also spelled 
Hallate. About this gentleman, whose career on the public 
buildings was very brief, no recollections and scarcely a tra- 
dition prevails. It has been generally said that he was an Eng- 
lishman and a pupil of the celebrated John Nash of London. 
It is apparent however, from the books of the Commissioners, 
that Hallet was a Frenchman. He is addressed by them as 
Monsieur Hallet and referred to by them as a French artist. 
They also apologize for writing him a letter by saying that the 
difficulty of making explanations between themselves and him 
verbally suggests the former manner of communication. Hal- 
let sent his plan to the Commissioners and they received it July 
17, 1792. They were struck with the evidences of his profes- 
sional capacity, and invited him to visit the spot as soon as he 
could. These were the old Commissioners, Johnson, Stewart, 
and Oarroll. It appears that Hallet's plans, which were several 
in number, had about commended him as the author of the 
building, and he was employed in that capacity when Dr. Thorn- 
ton, an Englishman, also presented a plan which the Commiss- 
ioners requested him to lodge with the Secretary of State at 
Philadelphia. This latter plan, although drawn by an amateur, 
affected both Jefferson and Washington to such a degree that a 
letter was at once despatched to the Commissioners requesting 
them to adopt it and to substitute it for Hallet's, but to do this 
with as much delicacy as possible and to retain Hallet in the 
public service. This peremptory order probably gave the Com- 

(56) 



ARCHITECTS OF THE CAPITOL. 57 

missioners much relief if we may believe the statement of George 
Hadfield, another architect who wrote twenty years later to the 
following effect : 

" A premium had been offered of five hundred dollars and a 
building lot for the best design for a capitol, at a time when 
scarcely a professional artist was to be found in any part of the 
United States ; which is plainly to be seen from the pile of 
trash presented as designs." 

It does not appear that Monsieur Hallet received in a cordial 
way this assurance that an English amateur had made a supe- 
rior elevation to his own, and he drew again and again designs 
while Thornton's were also amended after the foundations of 
the Capitol had been raised to the ground level. The situation 
was further embarrassed by Thornton's appointment as one of 
the Commissioners where he came into conflict with his prede- 
cessor in an administrative as well as a professional way. Mr. 
Hallet, in deference to Jefferson's suggestion, was employed at 
four hundred pounds per year, November 20, 1793. More than 
nine months previously, on April 5, 1793, the Commissioners 
wrote to Thornton : " The President has given his formal appro- 
bation of your plan." The changes in Thornton's design were, 
however, made so nearly like that of Hallet's, particularly as 
to the interior, that Monsieur demurred to the premium being 
accorded to Doctor Thornton. Quarrels ensued and Hallet 
withheld his drawings and wrote a letter to the Commissioners 
June 28, 1794, saying : " I claim the original invention of the 
plan now executing and beg leave to lay hereafter before you 
and the President the proofs of my right to it."' Thereupon 
the Commissioners demanded the plans and Monsieur Hallet 
refused to surrender them. He was then verbally acquainted 
with the order that their connection with him had ceased and 
he was no longer in the public service. From this time for- 
ward there is no notable mention in the Commissioner's books 
of this unfortunate architect, and I have not been able to find 
any traditions respecting him. His successor was George 
Hadfield, who continued on the work until May 10, 1798. Mr. 



58 ARCHITECTS OF THE CAPITOL. 

Hallet's account, amounting to upwards .of one hundred and 
seventy-six pounds, was allowed by the Commissioners. 

His name, however, had been deposited in the corner-stone 
as one of the architects, and subsequent developments have in 
a great measure vindicated his claim as a principal suggestor 
of the building. About seventy years after his disappearance 
from the public view a son of B. H. Latrobe, the real builder 
of the wings, returned to Washington Hallet's drawings. Mr. 
Clark the architect passed them over to the Librarian of Con- 
gress in 1873. I was permitted to make sketch copies of Hal- 
let's plans, and Mr. Clark came into the library while I was 
drawing from these plans and expressed his opinion that Hallet 
was the real architect, that what he called his " fanciful plan " 
had been borrowed by Thornton and changed to such a degree 
that Hallet was overridden in the premises. He called my 
attention to this memorandum in Hallet's handwriting : 

" A grand plan accompanied this (elevation) which Dr. Thorn- 
ton sent for, together with my plan in pencil." 

On another drawing the following memorandum in Hallet's 
handwriting appeared : 

" Sketch of the groundwork : part of the foundations were 
laid by sometime in August, 1793, now useless on account of the 
alterations since introduced. . S. hallet." 

Other drawings by Mr. Hallet were endorsed as follows : 

"The ground floor of a plan of the Capitol, laid before the 
board in October, 1793." 

" Plan of the ground and principal floor sent from Philadel- 
phia to the board in July, 1793." 

Doctor William Thornton came to America, like Alexander 
Hamilton, from the West India Islands. Ho was a man of a 
good deal of amateur talent, and his introduction to Jefferson 
brought him to live on the Capitol site where he remained for 
.the remainder of his days. He would appear to have been of 
an officious, buoyant, persevering disposition, and after he was 
relieved as Commissioner he gathered together models and curi- 



WASHINGTON ENDORSES THORNTON'S PLAN. 59 

osities in an abandoned hotel which stood on the site of the 
present general Post-office, and these curiosities were spared at 
his intercession from the British incendiary and became the 
nucleus of the present Patent Office collection, of which, while 
nominal clerk, Thornton was really the first Commissioner. 
He was also the founder of the first race track at Washington, 
and took delight in blooded horses, entering the lists with the 
great John Tayloe, the chief stock breeder and tbe richest citi- 
zen of the District. Dr. Thornton always insisted with vehe- 
mence that he was the original architect of the Capitol, and no 
doubt his picture of the elevations brought the administration 
to a conclusion. Jefferson says of it : " The grandeur, sim- 
plicity, and beauty of the exterior, the propriety with which the 
apartments are distributed and economy in the mass of the 
whole structure recommended this plan." The next day he 
says that Thornton's plan has captivated the eyes and judgment 
of all. " It is simple, noble, beautiful', excellently distributed, 
and moderate in size. * * Among its admirers no one is more 
decided than he whose decision is most important," meaning 
Washington. 

Mr. Jefferson, at the time above referred to, was held in great 
consideration by Washington. He had been stationed at the 
Court of France and was known to have a fine fancy for the 
arts and to take a patron's delight in the legislative edifices of 
his country. We can get an idea of his sentiments on art from 
a letter which he wrote April 10, 1791. He says: 

" For the capitol 1 should prefer the adoption of some of the 
models of antiquity, which have had the approbation of thou- 
sands of years — and for the President's House I should prefer 
the celebrated fonts of modern buildings." 

A controversy sprang up amongst the architects, which out- 
lived the life of Washington, and Thornton was put upon the 
defensive. In 1804, Mr. Latrobe addressed a report to Con- 
gress in which he denounced Thornton's plan and animadverted 
with some severity upon the principle of competition for designs 
of great public buildings, saying that " A picture " was not a 



60 ARCHITECTS OP THE CAPITOL. 

plan, and intimating that Thornton's work in the premises was 
merely pictorial. To this Thornton rejoined in a pamphlet, of 
which a copy exists in the Congressional Library, — a purchase 
with Mr. Jefferson's collection. Thornton says : 

" Mr. Hallet was not in the public service when or since I 
was appointed commissioner, which was on the twelfth day of 
September, 1794. Mr. Hadfield was appointed to superintend 
the work at the Capitol, October 15, 1795." .Thornton says 
further : 

" Mr. Hallet changed and diminished the senate room, which 
is now too small.' He laid square the foundation at the centre 
building, excluding the dome ; and when General Washington 
saw the extent of the alterations proposed he expressed his 
disapprobation in a style of such warmth as his dignity and 
self-command seldom permitted. * * * Mr. Hallet was desirous 
not merely of altering what might be improved, but even what 
was most approved. He made some judicious alterations, but 
in other instances he did injury * * *. When General Wash- 
ington honored me with the appointment of commissioner he 
requested that I should restore the building to a correspondence 
with the original plan." 

It further seems that Washington addressed the commission- 
ers, Gustavus Scott, William Thornton, and Alexander White, 
February 27, 1797, expressing his " Real satisfaction with their 
conduct," which involved an endorsement of Thornton's ideas. 

Mr. Hallet's first design for the capitol, as well as the mod- 
ifications and amendments of the same, show that he was an 
architect of very perfect knowledge. Mr. Clark, as we have 
said, the architect in 1873, told me that he had heard that 
Hallet was a pupil of Nash, who was the leading English arch- 
itect of his period. Nash was born in London in 1752, and 
after undergoing a course of training in his profession and 
practising it for some time, withdrew under the delusion of 
speculation and lost considerable sums of money. When he 
returned to his profession he met with very great success and 
opened an office in London in 1792. He designed and con- 



HALLET, THE PUPIL OF > ASH. 61 

structed numerous splendid mansion houses for the nobili 
and gentry in England and Ireland, and performed some of 
most celebrated street improvements in the British metr'v lS . 
He was an inventor as well, and in 1797 obtained a patent for 
improvement in the construction of arches and pier? ,."' bridges, 
which led him to assume the credit of ih-kod 1 • ' : the use of 
cast-iron girders. His work in London has been quite cele- 
brated, including the fashioning of Regent Street and its beau- 
tiful blocks, the Langh'am Place Church, the Haymarket 
Theater, the terraces in Regent's Park, and the pavilion at 
Brighton. England contains many superb interiors and impos- 
ing mansion-houses accredited to him, and he lived until 1835. 

It would be interesting only to architects to go at length 
into a discussion of the relative cleverness of Thornton's origi- 
nal plan, of Hallet's plans and of the amended Capitol as we 
see it to-day, the work of Latrobe and Bulfinch. The building 
has received the general approval of the public sentiment, and 
with the magnificent marble extensions of Mr. Walter, — which 
are a pattern with the old Capitol, — is one of the most imposing 
buildings in the world. Thornton's original design of- the 
Capitol had but one dome, a great eagle in the pediment, a statue 
with a club on the top of the pediment flanked by two 
female statues on the balustrade, and oak or laurel encom- 
passed the rounded top of the chief window in each wing. 

The original plan by Hallet placed the dome outside of the 
rectangle of the center and put the senate chamber in that 
rotunda. The center of the building was made a square open 
court with a covered walk around the sides and a carriage turn 
in the middle. The Supreme Court took the place of the 
subsequent senate chamber and the Vice-President's room was 
semi-circular and facing the long main corridor which traversed 
the edifice lengthwise. 

It would appear that Hallet was in Washington until Feb- 
ruary 22, 1795, for in the bunch of drawings recently consigned 
to the library and which were doubtless sent to the authorities 
by Hallet to prove his right to the premium — there is one 



62 



ARCHITECTS OF THE CAPITOL. 



" V A fanciful plan and elevation which the President having 
seen accidentally in September, 1793, agreed with the com- 
missioners to have the Capitol planned in imitation thereof." 




HALLET'S PLAN OF THE CAPITOL. 

Hallet's " Fanciful plan " was surmounted by a dome with 
drum pillars and a light open cupola. Six Doric columns 
supported the center which upheld a curved pediment with a 
large eagle in the tympanum, and below were four standing 
colossal figures of war, peace, justice, and time. . Three col- 
umns flanked the portico, which had four doors of equal size 
and low flights of steps. Shallow curtains with one door and 
one window connected in the center with the wings, which 
consisted of a basement and one story. The basement was of 
stone rusticated, and the portico above had four Ionic columns 
flanked by windows flush with the portico. In the pediment 
of each of the wings was a group of statuary of half a dozen 
figures, representing war and peace. In the recess under the 
porticoes were three designs in relief over the three doors which 
opened upon the portico. Hallet's " Fanciful plan " was bor- 
rowed by Thornton. 

We may congratulate ourselves that the present state of the 
arts and the unity of official direction in this country prevent 
such scandals in public construction as attended the building of 
the old Capitol. It does not appear that any harmony prevailed, 
and dishonesty was often charged and sometimes proved. The 
early commissioners accused L'Enfant, Roberdeau, Baoroaf, 
and others of circulating on the spot infamous falsehoods to 





SENATE CHAMBER. 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 



THE WAY TO HAVE BUILT THE CAPITOL. 63 

the prejudice of our character. Hadfield says that unfavor- 
able reports were taken to General Washington of Thornton's 
ground plan, and he was ignorantly advised to retain the eleva- 
tions and change the interior plans. The corner stone had 
no sooner been laid than " squabbles began ; differences, factions, 
and broils were the order of the day." The contractor for the 
foundation was displaced for another mason, " who used what 
is called the continental trowel, which was wheelbarrows filled 
promiscuously with stones and mortar and emptied on the 
walls. When the foundation was completed or nearly so, the 
whole was condemned and the second contractor or continental 
trowelist was dismissed." 

It is very certain that the foundations of the first Capitol 
were condemned and obliged to be rebuilt. After the first 
crop of commissioners had passed away it was found that at 
least two of their successors were short in their accounts or 
had kept no responsible accounts whatever. Mr. Hadfield, to 
whom we shall come directly, who resided in the city until his 
death and lived to see the reconstruction of the wings, published 
at the time a dignified criticism upon the edifice with these 
admissions : 

" The proper way to have built the Capitol was to have 
offered an adequate sum to the most eminent architect in any of 
the European cities, to furnish the design and working drawings, 
also a person of his own choice to superintend the work. In 
that case the Capitol would have been long ago completed and 
for half the sum that has been expended on the present wreck." 

The second architect in order is Mr. Hadfield, an Englishman 
who had been requested to come to this country and give some 
responsibility to the work on the public buildings. He received 
the endorsement of that undoubted genius, Latrobe, who 
employed him between 1803 and 1817 after the commissioners 
had cast him off, and he bore testimony that Hadfield had 
" talent, taste, and knowledge of art." Mr. Hadfield left behind 
him abiding proofs to the same effect in the City Hall and in the 
two remaining department buildings which he constructed 



64 ARCHITECTS OF THE CAPITOL. 

■ 

" Of brick in the Ionic order with freestone basements," two 
on each side of the President's house, namely, Treasury and 
State, War and Navy buildings. He could agree with the com- 
missioners but a short time, one of whom was Thornton afore- 
said, and instead of discharging Hadfield courteously it appears 
by their minutes that on May 10, 1798, they gave notice to a 
citizen, Mr. William Brent, to tell Hadfield that he was no 
longer in their employ. Hadfield died in Washington, Feb- 
ruary, 1826. His successor was James Hoban, who must have 
then lived elsewhere, probably in Maryland, where he had 
married, for he was ordered May 28, 1798, to superintend the 
building of the Capitol, to remove to the city, and to occupy 
Hadfield's house, or if he did not get it to charge his rent in 
some other dwelling to the government. 

At this time Hoban was architect of the President's house 
as well as of the Capitol, and he was allowed for the moment to 
draw his full salary on both buildings. He received a hundred 
guineas a year for his subsequent attention to the President's 
house. Hoban was a native of Kilkenny County, Ireland, and 
was educated and taught the profession of an architect at Dub- 
lin. His living grand-son, James Hoban, is possessed of a medal 
awarded to the architect by the Dublin Society, for the best style 
of ornamental brackets. In 1780, Hoban, still unmarried, sailed 
from Ireland to Charleston, S. C. where he settled and soon 
received employment on the public and private constructions of 
the place. South Carolina has had the honor of furnishing 
two architects and a sculptor to Washington, Hoban, Robert 
Mills and Clark Mills. 

At the conception of the Capital city, Mr. Laurens (Henry 
Laurens, long a State captive in the tower of London) gave 
Hoban a letter of recommendation to Washington. He speed- 
ily drew the prize for the President's palace and was employed 
to construct it, which he did with equal particularity, stability, 
and speed, so that it was habitable in 1799. It is traditional 
in the Hoban family that President Washington took exception 
to the style and proportions of the White House as inviting 



HOBAN VS. DAVY BARNS. 65 

criticism from severe Republicans, but that he gave up the point 
to the architect. It was revived, however, by Jefferson, of 
whom Tom Moore, Hoban's poet countryman, wrote in 1803 : 
" The President's House, a very noble structure, is by no means 
suited to the philosophical humility of its present possessor, 
vho inhabits but a corner of the mansion himself and abandons 
the rest to a state of uncleanly desolation. This grand edifice 
is encircled by a very rude paling through which a common 
rustic biH introduces the visitors to the first man in America." 
As an instance of the boorish feeling prevailing between the 
Commissioners, citizens, and architects, we may mention that 
David Burns, who owned a large part of the ground taken up 
by the city, resisted the opening of a cartway over his land to 
haul stone from the landing to the White House, and also threat- 
ened to sue the Commissioners, and complained of Mr. Hoban 
for cutting his wood, saying : " Such persons are not responsible, 
because they have no property any body can lay hands on, but 
are miserable speculators and without thrift." Mr. Hoban 
built the first post-office at Washington and many other good 
buildings, but he also failed to please the civil authorities although 
he reconstructed the White House after 1814 and maintained 
his influence in the city to the end. Captain Hoban died in the 
year 1831, possessed of about sixty thousand dollars in property, 
and having lived a comfortable and active life. He was at 
first interred in the old graveyard of St. Patrick's Church, but 
the remains were removed at a later date to 1$'. Olivet ceme- 
tery on the Bladensburg turnpike, where they lie at present. 
He left an efficient posterity, two sons in the U. S. Navy, another 
a priest, and a fourth, James, who was a fine Speaker and was 
United States Attorney of the District in the administration of 
President Polk. Hoban's residence is still standing at this 
writing on F street in the rear of 15th, on the north side, a 
landmark in itself. Sharp-gabled and very decrepit, and point- 
ing toward the street. He married after he removed to Wash- 
ington, and his wife was Miss Seuell of Maryland. He was a 
devout Catholic, and those who most distinctly recall him at 
5 



Q6 ARCHITECTS OF THE CAPITOL. 

this day are clergymen like Fathers Lynch and McElroy. 
During the early building of the Capitol the clerk of the works, 
Lenth all, Blagden, the chief stone mason, and a citizen, Cocking, 
were killed upon it. The stone quarries used for the early 
public edifices were at Acquia creek and at Hamburg near the 
mouth of Rock Creek, the latter within the city limits ; these 
quarries for stone and slate were purchased outright and cost 
twenty-nine thousand five hundred and fifty-eight dollars. The 
since celebrated Seneca stone was also used at a very early 
period for flagging and steps ; the former cost about seven dol- 
lars a ton and the latter about fifteen dollars, delivered. 

The fourth professional Architect of the Capitol was .one of 
the remarkable men of the country. His constructions of both 
a public and private character are numerous at Washington 
and in other cities of the country. One of his sons, B. II. Latrobe, 
Jr., was afterwards made engineer of location and construction 
of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, July 1, 1886. He was 
the genius of that great mountain highway. He had been edu- 
cated by his father, the architect, for a lawyer, but took to engi- 
neering, while his brother John H. B. Latrobe, educated for an 
engineer, became a lawyer of Baltimore, equally celebrated. 
The elder, Benjamin H. Latrobe, was born in Yorkshire, Eng- 
land, May 1, 1767, and was the son of Rev. Henry Latrobe, a 
Moravian clergyman of Huguenot descent, who figured as Super- 
intendent of the Moravian establishments in England and as an 
author in the Church. The architect was educated at a village 
near Leeds, at the Moravian school of Weisky in Saxony and at 
the University of Leipsic. He was a cornet of Prussian Hus- 
sars, and made the tour of Europe, examining all the public 
buildings of note before he returned to England in 1732. He 
entered the office of Cockrell, an eminent English architect, 
and married the daughter of the rector of Clerkenwell par- 
ish. The death of his wife gave him such desire of change that 
in 1796 he resolved to come to America and visit an uncle, 
Colonel Antes. The ship brought him to Norfolk where by 
good luck he fell in with the officer of customs who introduced 




MARBLE HALL, CAPITOL, WASHINGTON. 



BUILDING THE CAPITOL. 67 

him to Judge Bushrod Washington, a nephew of President Wash- 
ington, which led to his visiting Mount Vernon and becoming 
one of the fast young friends of that father of the Capital. . 

Richmond, Virginia, was then rapidly growing, and Latrobe 
designed the penitentiary and several tine private mansions. 
In 1798 he was established in Philadelphia where he built the 
old water works on Penn square and the old Barfks of Penn- ■ 
sylvania and Philadelphia, and he ahso designed the Bank of 
the United States which was built by his pupil, Strickland. It 
is to be remarked that as Latrobe was the preceptor of Strick- 
land, Strickland was the preceptor of Walter and Walter of 
Clark. As Latrobe availed himself of the services of Hadfield 
there has been a close succession of minds of the same order 
and of mutual inspiration at work on the Capitol for eighty 
years. Few buildings in the world have commanded the ser- 
vices for so long a time of men who knew each other. 

At Philadelphia Latrobe married his second wife, the daughter 
of Robert Hazelhurst, who had been a partner of Robert Norris, 
the early speculator in Washington lots and buildings. From 
this second marriage arose the two eminent sons above referred 
to. Mr. Latrobe was summoned from Philadelphia to be sur- 
veyor of the Public buildings at Washington in 1803. , He made 
a report at the beginning of the following year to this effect : 
" The hall in which the house of Representatives are now assem- 
bled was erected in part of the permanent building. I am, how- 
ever, under the necessity of representing to you that the whole 
of the masonry from the very foundation is of such bad work- 
manship and materials that it would have been dangerous to 
have assembled within the building had not the walls been 
strongly supported by shores from without." - 

After due inspection Mr. Latrobe reported that the south 
wing of the Capitol required rebuilding from the very founda- 
tion. He also resolved upon a reformation of the outer plan 
and a very thorough change of the inner. This led to the 
criticism from his associate Hadfield, " That there is no con- 
formity between the outer parts and the interior of the Capitol, 



68 ARCHITECTS OF THE CAPITOL. 

the original designs having been totally disregarded." Partic- 
ularly does Hadfield denounce the raising of the entire floor 
throughout the building from the ground story to the principal 
order over the casement, excluding the light, making catacombs 
of the basement and turning an inferior part of the edifice into 
the superior uses." We may regard the east front and wings 
of the old freestone Capitol in mass as we see it as the design 
of Mr. Latrobe, who had sufficient influence with Mr. Jefferson 
to make him modify his extravagant praise of Thornton's 
Resign. The embargo and non-intercourse acts of that admin- 
istration made money so scarce that very little was accom- 
plished beyond finishing the interior of the wings,, and when 
the Capitol was burnt in 1814, Latrobe, who was then absent at 
Pittsburg building the first steamboat to descend the western 
waters (jointly with Fulton, Livingstone, and Nicholas I. Roose- 
velt, his son-in-law by his first marriage) hastened back to the 
Capitol and took charge of its reconstruction in a more method- 
ical and comprehensive way than any of his predecessors. He 
first made an inspection of the mined building and reported 
part of the walls and all the foundations sound and the more 
delicate work of the interior little injured although the incen- 
diaries had labored all night to make the devastation complete, 
using powder, etc., of their rockets for that purpose. It was 
Latrobe who designed what Madison called the American order of 
architecture, using the cotton blossom, the tobacco leaf, and 
the Indian corn, shaft and ear, in his columns and capitals. 
He made a personal visit to the Catoctin and London hills to i[ 
find quarries, and discovered the breccia or blue mottled mar- 
ble which is used in the old hall of Representatives and in the 
corridors. The hall of Representatives, the Senate Chamber, 
the old Supreme Court Room, and the old lobbies, as well as the 
ground plan of the two wings, were Latrobe's work. He also 
erected St. John's Church, the Van Ness and Brentwood man- 
sions, the arched gate of the Navy Yard, and was conferred 
with as to public buildings in many parts of the country. La- 
trobe had been on good terms with the commissioners fourteen 




LADIES' RECEPTION ROOM, CAPITOL, WASHINGTON. 



THE FIFTH ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL. bd 

years when President Monroe appointed a one-armed Virginia 
Colonel, Samuel S. Lane, with whom he soon came into collis- 
ion, and he resigned in 1817. Removing to Baltimore he built 
the noted Cathedral there and a part of the Commercial 
Exchange. His son, Henry S. Latrobe, had been sent to 
New Orleans to build the water works in 1811 and died there 
in 1817. Following him upon the same errand, the architect of 
the Capitol met with the same fate September 3, 1820. 

Mr. Latrobe has left behind him letters, compositions, con- 
structions, and a posterity which will give him a permanent 
fame in the Republic. He was well acquainted with the Latin, 
Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Ger- 
man languages. 

The fifth architect on the Capitol was Charles Bulfinch, the 
senior of Latrobe, who had been born in Boston, August 8, 1763, 
the son of a physician. He saw the battle of Bunker Hill 
from the housetops of the city, and graduated at Harvard in 
1781. Finding life in a country house distasteful he made the 
tour of Europe to further his desire to be an architect, and 
returning to Boston — he married his cousin, Hannah Apthorp, 
and became at the same time a constructor, merchant, and 
selectman. It was he who laid out the streets and filled up 
the marshes of Boston, built the Boston State House, and was 
one of the partners to dispatch the ships Columbia and Wash- 
ington to the Pacific Ocean whereby Captain Gray discovered 
the Columbia River. He twice failed in business, once by 
putting up Franklin Place, Boston, on too ambitious a scale, 
and again by the endeavor to fill up the Charles River marshes. 
His work is plentiful in Boston, as in the Court House and the 
North and South Churches. He also built the State House at 
Augusta, Me. 

Bulfinch made the acquaintance of President-elect Monroe 
in 1816. At this time he was a lame man, having crippled 
himself for life by slipping on the steps of Fanueil Hall, and he 
was visiting Washington and other cities to obtain suggestions 
for a hospital for Boston. President Monroe renewed the 



70 ARCHITECTS OF THE CAPITOL. 

acquaintance while making a tour in the East subsequently, 
and was struck with the elegance of Bulfinch's buildings. The 
architect refused to take Latrobe's place until the latter had 
resigned absolutely, and then he proceeded to complete the wings 
on Latrobe's plan and to build the rotunda, old dome, and 
library, and to give area to the west front of the Capitol, which 
had been built too near the brow of the hill, by putting up the 
glacies and architectural terrace. In 1830 when the Capitol 
was virtually completed, Bulfinch resigned and returned to 
Boston, where he died April 15, 1844, at the age of eighty-one. 
He built two other buildings at Washington, the church for 
the Unitarian Society of which he was a member, and the old 
penitentiary at Greenleaf s Point, where the conspirators were 
imprisoned, tried, and hanged in 1865. 

The criticism of Hadfield, already twice referred to, was writ- 
ten in 1819 in the period of Bulfinch. That artist throws some 
light upon the cost and style of the edifice. He begins by 
calling it " A very singular building," ascended by " uncouth 
stairs in the south wing." The plan of the Representatives 
Hall, he says, was taken from the remains of a theater near 
Athens as described by Stewart, an authority. It had gained 
" some advantage in appearance of form and costliness of 
materials" over the former hall, which was, however, more 
consistent, being all of native freestone. The capitals of the 
columns in this hall were executed in Italy" and are a 
copy from the capitals of the well-known remains of the lantern 
of Demosthenes at Athens. Had the entire columns been in 
Carrara marble they would have cost less money. Hadfield 
rebukes the coupling of the fotai center columns, the screen 
between the columns of the peristyle, the gallery door, and the 
principal entrance crowding each other, and the screen of 
columns on the south side of the hall, which " would be better 
among the ruins of Palmyra." 

Such criticisms as Hadfield's lose their effect upon the 
public mind by their minuteness. The building stood for a 
quarter of a century complete as Bulfinch left it, and meantime 




■SB 



. _ - — 

■88H§ iMilliiBS 




<s«<;5 








HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, CAPITOL, 
WASHINGTON. 



PROPOSED CHANGES IN THE CAPITOL. 71 

persons of every quality from all parts of the world bestowed 
their encomiums upon it. For many years a contest raged 
about the difficulty of hearing in that ambitious domed, column- 
encircled Hall of Representatives, but no portion of the building 
is more admired to-day, and perhaps people of wisest censure 
prefer the involutions, quaint workmanship, economy of space, 
and classical simplicity of the old freestone building to the 
marble wings which are modeled upon the former plan. 

The old Capitol, including the worksof art which belonged 
there, cost about two million seven hundred thousand dollars. 
It covered considerably more than an acre and a half of ground. 
It was three hundred and fifty-two feet, four inches long, seventy 
feet high to the top of the balustrade, one hundred and forty- 
five feet high to the top of the old dome, and the wings were 
one hundred and twenty-one feet, six inches deep. These dimen- 
sions show a sufficient edifice for the period to have been truly 
a national Capitol. The part which the British burnt had cost 
about seven hundred and ninety thousand dollars ; to restore 
those parts cost about six hundred and ninety thousand dollars ; 
the freestone center cost about six hundred and ninety thousand 
dollars. The park enclosing this old Capitol contained about 
twenty-two and a half acres. 

Within that old building happened all the contests of the 
first social civilization of the Republic. Every room and lobby 
and recess of it is full of reminiscence. Attempts are now 
being made on the score of architectural harmony to demolish 
it and erect a new center in keeping with the wings. We may 
hope that this will not take place until reverence and innova- 
tion, the historical and the artistic spirit, have a full debate on 
the subject in which the country can take sides. 

The successor of Mr. Bulfinch was Robert Mills, who was 
appointed government architect- by Andrew Jackson in 1830. 
He was a man of mediocre talents, whose opportunities allowed 
him to impress himself favorably upon the country. He was 
born in Charleston, S. C, and placed under the tuition of 
James Hoban in 1800, with whom he remained two years. Mr. 



72 AECHITECTS OF THE CAPITOL. 

Jefferson introduced. him to Latrobe. He had very extensive 
employment in the country, and constructed churches, public 
buildings, and mansions from Pennsylvania to Georgia ; he built 
the second Treasury, of which the facade remains, and com- 
menced the Patent Office and the general Post-Office, all three 
of which retain the impression of his style. He designed the 
Washington Monument, made a design for the Bunker Hill 
Monument, built the Monument Church at Richmond, the State 
Capitol at Harrisburgh, the Philadelphia Mint, and was the 
engineer of South Carolina when the Charleston and Hamburg 
Railroad was constructed between 1830 and 1884. Mr. Mills 
completed Bulfinch's work on the Capitol but got into a wrangle 
about the Patent Office which led to his removal. He long 
inhabited a tall brick house on New Jersey Avenue, Capitol 
Hill, and died in Washington, March 3, 1855. Mr. Mills had 
very little connection with the Capitol building, and for twenty 
years after its completion there was nothing more of architect- 
ure except a wrangle about the acoustics of the Hall of Congress. 

New states were, however, admitted to the Union, and the 
increase of population in all the states multiplied Congressmen 
so that in 1850 it was determined to extend the old wings by 
greater wings named " extensions," to be constructed of more 
durable materials and upon the original plan. Proposals were 
invited and the fortunate -architect was Thomas W. Walter. 

He held and keeps the rank of , the foremost classical archi- 
tect in America. The corner-stone of the additions was laid 
by President Filmore, July 4, 1851, more than fifty-nine years 
after Washington laid the south-east corner stone of the old 
Capitol. Mr. Walter was born in Philadelphia, September 4, 
1804, and was the .son of a builder. In 1819 h& entered the 
office of Mr. Strickland and, working with the trowel, supported 
himself and became- a fair artist in colors. In 1830 he became 
an architect on his own account and the following year designed 
Moyamensing Prison. His plans for Girard College were 
accepted, and from 1833 to 1847 he superintended its construc- 
tion, visiting Europe in 1838 to make studies for that institution. 




SENATE CHAMBER, CAPITOL, WASHINGTON. 



COST OP THE CAPITOL. 73 

In 1843 the Venezuelan Government employed him to con- 
struct a mole and port at LaGuayra, and from 1851 to 1865 
he was the architect of the Capitol and had an influence in the 
Treasury, Patent Office, and Post-Office extensions. Mr. Walter 
was accused of influencing contracts on the public works 
in Washington, and the disposition of funds on the Capitol build- 
ing was mainly committed to an able engineer officer, Mont- 
gomery C. Meigs. 

The first estimate for the Capitol extension was two million 
six hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars and five years time. 
In 1856 Captain Meigs called upon Jefferson Davis for two mil- 
lion eight hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars and said that 
the additional cost was on account of the low estimates of Mr. 
Walter and in the substitution of marble, iron, encaustic tiles, 
etc., for wood, plaster, and stone. And he added: "I have 
labored faithfully and diligently to construct this building in 
such a manner that it would last for ages as a creditable monu- 
ment of the state of the arts at this time in this country." 
At that time the expenditure was about ninety thousand 
dollars monthly. 

Captain M. C. Meigs reported in August, 1856, that above 
two million five hundred thousand dollars had been expended 
on the new wings up to that time, that the work had no debts, 
and that everything had been bought for cash. The Berkshire 
marble shafts, monolitho, cost one thousand four hundred dol- 
lars each, and the shafts for the corridors of the south basement 
two hundred dollars each. The following were the prices of 
marbles per cubic foot. Massachusetts, two dollars and fifty cents ; 
Tennesee, six dollars; Vermont Green, seven dollars ; Potomac 
Breccia, four dollars ; Levant from Barbary, five dollars ; Italian 
Statuary, seven dollars and ninety-five cents ; Common Italian, 
two dollars and seventy-five cents. Meigs changed Walters' 
design somewhat, putting in one hundred and ninety-two columns 
in all instead of two hundred and fifty-two. Bricks, from all 
cities, cost from five dollars and fifty cents to nine dollars and 



74 ARCHITECTS OP THE CAPITOL. 

twelve cents per thousand. To lay the bricks cost five dollars 
and eight cents per thousand. 

The cost of the Capitol extension was about eight million dol- 
lars, of the new dome about one million two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars, and of the new library enough additional to 
make the entire cost upwards of ten million dollars. Works 
of art and ornaments made three hundred and fifty thousand dol- 
lars more. The extensions are about one hundred and forty-three 
by two hundred and thirty-nine feet each exclusive of porticoes. 
The whole Capitol has therefore cost about thirteen million 
dollars. 



^!^fP 111 

n 







■^■|H& V 

XOBBY OF SENATE, CAPITOL, WASHINGTON. 



CHAPTEE VI. 



THE LOBBY AND ITS GENTRY. 

The word " Lobbyist," as any body might guess, is derived 
from the part of the Capitol where people go, who have objects 
to attain on the floors of Congress but not the right of access. 
In the Latin lobby signifies a covered portico-pit for walking, 
and in the Capitol at Washington the lobbies are long, lofty, 
and lighted corridors completely enclosing both halls of legis- 
lation. One of the four sides of this Lobby is guarded by door- 
keepers who can generally be seduced by good treatment or a 
douceur to admit people to its privacy, and in this darkened 
corridor the lobbyists call out their members and make their 
solicitations. 

The lobby at Washington is referred to by the architect 
Latrobe as early as 1806. He explains that " The Lobby of the 
House is so separated from it that those who retire to it cannot 
see and probably will not distinctly hear what is going forward 
in it. This arrangement, he says, u t has been made with the 
approbation of the President of the United States and also 
under the advice of the speakers of the two houses at the time 
when the designs were made. It is novel, but it is supposed 
that the inconveniences to which the Lobby now subjects the 
House will be thereby avoided." 

This shows the high antiquity of the Washington Lobby. 

I have no doubt that many of my readers may be asking 
themselves, what kind of a fellow is a lobbyist to look at ? 

A lobbyist is an operator upon his acquaintance, his wits, 
and his audacity. Your lobbyist may be an old man, whose 
experience, a plomb, suavity or venerableness may recommend 

(75^ 



76 THE LOBBY AND ITS GENTRY. 

him. He may be a strong man in middle life, who commands 
what he is paid for doing by a knowledge of his own force and 
magnetism. He may be an adroit young man, full of hollow 
profession, who dexterously leads his victim along from ter- 
race to terrace of sentimentality, until that dell is reached 
where the two men become confederates, and may whisper the 
truth to each other. 

The average lobbyist must seem an agreeable man, whether 
he he so or no. He is seldom so foolish as to risk a quarrel 
for no end, and therefore a newspaper-writer can readily 
approach him and learn the news, — there being a tacit truce 
understood between them, by which the writer gets his news 
on the understanding that he will give trouble, in the way of 
revelations, to none less than the lobbyist's principals. The 
native lobbyist rather likes to read quick-witted accounts of 
such operations as he is about, and, if somebody in his own 
line other than himself, be described, enjoys the matter hugely. 

I recollect, on one occasion, having it suggested to me that 
a sketch on the game of poker as played at Washington might 
incidentally trench upon a character of lobby influence not gen- 
erally understood. The intimation that I received was, that 
certain prominent men in Congress and the government were 
very fond of the "Western game of draw-poker ; and that certain 
gentlemen in the Lobby, knowing this fact, humored the incli- 
nation, and played a losing game with the aforesaid dignita- 
ries, in order that the acquaintance might be closer, and the 
legislative business in hand easy to approach. It is well estab- 
lished that, if you can deceive a man into believing that he has 
plundered you at cards, he feels under a sort of chivalric obli- 
gation ; and hence a strong lobbyist will permit himself to lose 
heavily at the poker-table, under the assumption that the great 
Congressman who wins the stake will look leniently upon the 
little appropriation he means to ask for. As the appropriation 
is sure to be twenty-fold the loss at cards, it is plain that the 
loser really plays the best game at poker. 

On this occasion, I went directly to a couple of fellows whom 



THE AVERAGE LOBBYIST. 77 

I knew to be prime hands at the draw game, and stated to them 
that I could not play poker, and wanted to get an idea of it 
sans experience, and also some points with which to point my 
article. Both men entered into the spirit of the proposition, 
and while one sat down, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, 
and gave me som«e inside information, the other slipped off 
and bought a book called " The American Hoyle," which he 
sent to me under the frank of the very member of Congress 
who was to be the subject of the article. 

Amongst the lobbyists at Washington, is one very agreeable, 
well-behaved, and most learned man, who is on excellent terms 
with some of the most prominent of the judges, senators, etc., 
at the Capital. He formerly enjoyed the advantage of a part- 
nership-at4aw, and in a distant state was quite an influence in 
politics and at the bar. I believe that an unfortunate streak 
of luck came to him in the course of his practice, by which he 
was able, upon a speculation, involving some legislative proceed- 
ings, to make very much more money in a short space of time 
than he could do in a year or two by methodical practice. 
Whatever the cause, he slipped his moorings as a fair lawyer, 
and took to the legislature every winter, but never in support 
of any small matter. His propositions were all imperial, and 
to hear him talk you would think his ends were his country's, 
his God's, and truth's. He had a fine way of talking about 
" The_ equities," which he explained to be something superior 
in morals to mere points of law and evidence ; and, with his 
fine grave face, suave manner, and enormous determination, 
he. never failed to be respectable, and I always wondered how 
he ever could fail. Yet he always did fail, that is, he could 
inspire sufficient confidence in those who backed him with 
money to be kept at Washington from year to year at their 
expense, but his proposals were so preposterous mi the amount 
asked, that nobody dared to vote for them. 

On one occasion I was bound to New York, when this gentle- 
man was discovered to have the adjacent berth to mine, and to 
be my companion in those agreeable hours one spends sitting 



78 THE LOBBY AND ITS GENTRY. 

up until the berth shall be made, the lights put down, and the 
last passenger turned in. I was but imperfectly aware of his 
business at Washington, where he had always addressed me. 
respectfully, and with a lazy man's privilege, I turned to him 
more unguardedly than on previous occasions, and soon found 
myself under the glamour of a very remarkable mind. He had 
spent much of his life in a distant part of the country, among 
associations interesting in themselves, and the grade of his 
acquaintances was high, and often eminent. He was President- 
making on this particular evening, and called my attention to 
the force, record, and consistency of some gentlemen whom I 
had never thought of in association with the Chief Magistracy. 
As he proceeded in his talk, I felt a luminous mind near me as 
truly as if I had been sitting under some shining orb. His lit- 
erary tastes were just crude enough to be original and honest. 
His acquaintance with men was that of one who never took a 
suggestion but he gave one back like an equal. There was 
bearing in the man-also, and that feeling of warm interest in 
my youth which had the effect to make me feel that there was 
something to pity in my associate. Without any clear knowl- 
edge that he had ever been wronged, I got to feel that his desert 
had been unequal to his aspiration, and imperceptibly the 
impression -was made upon me that he had lost his grasp upon 
fortune by too much courage, rather than by the abandonment 
of his friends ; for, like every man in the Lobby, as I afterwards 
found out, he placed much stress upon personal fidelity. You 
never find a genuine lobbyist but he makes it a point of honor 
that friendship is the last manly element to be given up, and I 
suppose that this is an approximate notion to that older relation 
we express when we say that there is honor among thieves. 
At Washington one hears much more of loyalty to one's friends 
than of loyalty to one's country. In fact, one would soon become 
unpopular in that promiscuous society by affecting any undue 
or juvenile consideration for his country. They expect John 
A. Bingham, or Daniel Voorhees, or some of the professional 
orators, to attend to that kind of sentiment exclusively. 



A SPECIMEN LOBBYIST. 79 

Time ran on, and I discovered what my quondam companion 
of the sleeping-car was working his brain upon during the pend- 
ing session. He had a fine scheme, based upon the nicest prin- 
ciples of equity,. to take sixty million dollars out of the Treas- 
ury to refund the cotton tax. I have never been able to per- 
suade myself that he did not believe he was engaged in a highly 
meritorious duty in seeking to have that cotton-tax taken out 
of the Treasury and refunded, because, as he expressed it, the 
Supreme Court had been equally divided on the subject, and 
would certainly have made a decision as he argued it, except 
that two unjudicial Justices had been added to the Bench to 
anticipate certain railway decisions, and were not to be relied 
upon when a fine point of law and honor came up. The sixty 
million dollars were not to be grossly shoveled out of the Treas- 
ury, for my friend was no such gross disturber of the revenues 
and the tax-scale. Like every other lobbyist, he preferred the 
pleasant form of a bonded restitution. 

The Treasury was merely to listen to the courts, as the courts 
were merely 4o do justice to a war-ridden people. If the courts 
should be so lost to judicial integrity as to slip the matter over 
from term to term, he did not entertain the supposition that a 
Congress of his countrymen would be equally tardy in doing 
their duty. When this Congress had shown, in a chivalric way, 
its origin with the constituency, and its respect for law and 
" equity," by passing the little bill which he proposed, nothing 
else was necessary than for the Treasury to issue sixty million 
dollars of bonds, redeemable in forty years, with the proper 
coupons attached. Having your coupons attached, you, as a , 
friend of the outraged planter, were merely to collect the inter- 
est annually ; and here my friend was wont to stop and say, with 
a look which was as impressive as Chevalier Bayard's : " What 
is interest at seven per cent to a nation like ours, which owes so 
much to the cotton interest ?" 

You can see it all in a twinkling. The whole thing involved 
but four million or so per annum ; while, meantime, with his 
three cents per pound on cotton refunded to him, the planter 



80 THE LOBBY AND ITS GENTKY. 

would take new heart, believe again in the generosity of the 
country, put this annual amount into gins, seed, and labor, 
and push the country so far ahead that, when the bonds came 
due at the end of forty years, so far from anything being lost, 
there would only be a magnificent investment on all sides. It 
would bless him that gave and him that took. 

If there could be such a thing in our days as a simple-minded 
man in Congress, it might not be hard to suppose that a scheme 
like this might carry conviction to his mind. But my friend, 
probably, had a less sentimental backing than this to his prop- 
osition. All that portion of the press, all those Congressmen, 
all the commercial interests, in the cotton area, were, perhaps, 
already driven up and prepared to vote for this job as a sec- 
tional issue ; for he makes a great mistake who thinks we have 
got out of sectionalism by getting out of slavery. It was the 
cotton which made the sectionalism before fully as much as the 
slave ; because the slave might grow anywhere, but the cotton 
would not. In this scheme, however, there was still another 
powerful interest lying back in the rear, and that>was a com- 
bination of disinterested gentlemen who paid my friend's 
expenses in Washington, and had already secured nearly the 
whole sum to be restored from the Treasury, by obtaining the 
refusal of nearly all the said claims for the cotton which had 
been seized. 

Although sixty million dollars were to be represented by the 
bonds which the Treasury were to issue, it might take but a 
few thousand dollars to get control of the bonds in anticipation 
of their issue. These few thousand dollars would, perhaps, 
come from some plethoric banker who was to be promised the 
negotiation of the bonds when the Treasury should put them 
out. In order to make everything fair, perhaps a sjtock com- 
pany, with no capital to see, but plenty to talk about, had 
arranged to distribute stock in anticipation of the bonds, to 
redeem the stock with the bonds when they were at last printed, 
and perhaps the whole Confederacy was to be " taken in " some- 
where between the passage of the bill and the insurance of the 
bonds. 



HOW BILLS ARE LOBBIED. 81 

Another of our sterling knights of the Lobby of Washington 
is the gentleman who is responsible for the great tunnel pro- 
ject. 

This man is a Columbus, a Lesseps, and a De "Witt Clinton 
of his kind. He is, I believe, a native of Prussia, and a fine- 
looking man, with Oriental features, a dark eye, excellent address, 
in despite of his German accent, and he is both an author, a 
pleader, and a diplomatist. Some say he is no engineer ; but, ' 
if this be the case, he has performed an enormous amount of 
work as a mere assumer, which it would have been hard for a 
real professional mining engineer to do as well. 

I made this gentleman's acquaintance the first year I came 
to Washington, while visiting, as I was in the habit of doing, 
Mr, Riley, clerk of the Mining Committee. 

Mr. Riley had led a life of adventure ; had edited a newspaper 
in British Columbia, and subsequently made a journey to the 
diamond fields of South Africa, to write a book for a Hartford 
publishing house. He died of cancer in the face before his book 
was completed. 

One day while speaking to Mr. Riley, he called my attention 
to some large and beautiful albums filled with the richest pho- 
tographs of Kings and Queens, works of art, fine architectures, 
and people prominent in literature, opera, and adventure, which 
could be collected in Europe. I had never seen, even in Europe, 
such a perfect and exquisite library of photographs, and they 
have been uniformly the admiration of all who have seen them. 
They were the property of the tunnel-maker. Adjacent to these 
photographic books was a magnificent collection of gems, min- 
erals, etc., from the various mines of Europe. , I was told by 
Mr. Riley, as a mark of confidence, that he would see to it that 
I should become possessed of a copy of an extraordinary book 
on mining which his great friend and collector was at that time 
publishing. 

In due time this book came out, and it was, indeed, an expen- 
sive and entertaining work, and of a somewhat technical char- 
acter. 

6 



82 THE LOBBY AND ITS GENTKY. 

The title of this work was, " The Comstock Lode, and the 
Evils of the Present System of Mining." 

It began with a description of the Comstock Lode, — a mighty 
vein of gold and silver in the State of Nevada, which was dis- 
covered in the year 1869, and on which nearly forty companies 
owned claims. These companies had already produced the 
incredible sum of one hundred and thirty million dollars in bul- 
lion. The shafts into the lode had been sunk more than one 
thousand feet, so that, between the cost of labor, the interference 
of water, and the loss of power, the whole lode was in danger 
of abandonment. If abandoned, one hundred thousand people 
would be deprived of their occupation and means of subsistence ! 
Such a calamity Providence had done its part to avert by rais- 
ing the lode a thousand feet or more^ above the adjacent valley, 
which was thus manifestly designed to be used for the propul- 
sion of a tunnel beneath the lode, which would at once draw off 
the water and carry off the ore by an inclined plane, and per- 
mit economical and vastly ramified mining for a hundred years 
to come. This tunnel, which would be called after its proposer, 
would have a length of twenty-one thousand feet, with shafts 
making the amount total forty-three thousand. ■ The scheme 
had been already proposed to eminent " experts " in Europe, 
who forthwith came to the aid of the engineer with letters of 
indorsement, all duly printed in this beautiful volume. The 
mining companies' working far above the lode had agreed to 
pay two dollars a ton for the ore which the great tunnel should 
carry out for them. The Tunnel was to have two substantial 
railroad tracks. Such tunnels had been built in Germany and 
elsewhere, as in the Hartz Mountains; and the engineer staked 
his reputation, and gave the whole tunnel, liberally, as security, 
that, if Congress would issue bonds and come to the aid of the 
work to the extent of five million dollars, fifty million dollars 
per annum of precious metal could be brought out, science would 
be benefited, the mineral domain would be filled with immigra- 
tion, the burdens of the people in taxation would be reduced, 
and the national debt paid off! 



THE " COMSTOCK LODE." 83 

Some years have passed since this book was placed in my 
hands, and every year the indefatigable ngineer adds another 
tome, if possible more agreeable, more eloquent, and more con- 
vincing, in favor of the proposition. He has obtained some 
private credit, and has had sympathy among the miners, hun- 
dreds of whom have given parts of their work for nothing ; 
while, in Congress, men like William D. Kelley, Gen. Banks, • 
and Senator Nye, have made such speeches in his favor as Queen 
Isabel might have delivered before the King of Arragon in aid 
of Columbus. Every session of Congress finds the engineer in 
good apartments at Washington, patiently reasoning out the 
cause, showering his scorn upon those too blind to see and too 
selfish to help ; and, in the face of the opposition of the most 
powerful Capital on the Pacific Coast, he has succeeded in get- 
ting two or three reports from the Mining and other Commit- 
tees, indorsing his project. Horace Greeley committed the edi- 
torial columns of the New York Tribune to it. Ifmever achieved, 
it has become one of the notorieties of the period. 

There is a certain kind of nature in your fine old lobbyist, which 
grows tough and sturdy by opposition. In the amount of oppo- 
sition, it avows that it finds at least the bitter half of the appreci- 
ation which belongs to it. This tunnel, however, has not risen 
above the usual cares of such popular propositions, and the hand- 
some shares of stock of the Tunnel Company, which represent 
the golden meed of victory, if ever that time comes, are not 
uncommon on the streets of the Federal City. 

But, " Pshaw!" says your fine old lobbyist, "what is there 
wrong about our stock ? What is our property we have a right 
to divide, as we are a chartered institution under the laws." 

The great banking institution which is fighting the tunnel 
proposition has, however, its own suggestion for the develop- 
ment of the country and decrease of taxation on a scale scarcely 
less extraordinary, in the matter of irrigation. 

While our engineering friend wants to take all the water 
out of the Comstock lode, the quartz company and bank which 
oppOse him want to flood all the San Joaquin Valley with 



84 THE LOBBY AND ITS GENTRY. 

water, and redeem an empire from the drought. They have 
had engineers from India to demonstrate the entire feasibility 
of the project, and I believe that their bill passed Congress 
near the close of the session, sustained, as it was, by all the 
powerful influences which resist the scheme of the tunnel. 

What will become of us if the great tunnel and the great 
irrigating scheme combine and drench all the Pacific Coast 
with the water pumped out of the lode ? If both the schemes 
be successful, our heads will fly off; and, if both fail, where 
will be our pockets ? 

The next of our exalted lobbyists is the gentleman who 
watches the claims for French spoliation. He advertises with the 
regularity of the original Jacobs, whenever the prospect revives 
for paying these seventy-year-old losses. Does the Alabama 
Treaty arrange to pay losses inflicted by British slavery-corsairs ? 
So much more the reason for beginning in the right way with 
the wrongs of our grandfathers ! Is there a Venezuelean claim 
commission prepared ? Then why do we expect other govern- 
ments to deal restitution to us who began with swindling our 
countrymen during the French republican wars ? We think 
our gifted friend deceased sometimes ; like Mr. Hood's infant ; 

We thought him dying when he slept, 
And sleeping when he died ; 

for, after we have ceased to regret him, hard as his loss has 
been, up turns that familiar advertisement in the Washington, 
journals : 

" The French claims agency. In uninterrupted existence 
for forty-five years. Justice is to be done to us at last, friends ! 
I have never doubted the integrity of the United States Gov- 
ernment, if the matter were pressed steadily upon its attention. 
The prospects at the present time are light almost unto the 
perfect day. Send us the name of your grandfather's step- 
father. If the middle name is remembered, please put it in ; 
otherwise no matter, for we shall be sure to know all about it. 
We keep a list of ships, captains, breadth of beam and keel, 



THE " CLAIMS FOR FRENCH SPOLIATION." 85 

and damages at compound interest. Broken hearts, assuage 
your tears ! All will be well by addressing Brobiggan, post- 
office box 41,144." 

What kind of looking man is this French claim agent ? I 
often wondered ! Is he the son or grandson of himself, having 
inherited the business in direct line, or is he like " Pecksniff, 
architect," possessed of the designs of Chuzzlewit, merely a 
clerk of the original Jacobs, who has wormed into the scheme 
or purchased it for the heirs ? If he be himself, the same in 
memory, faith, and perseverance, the same stalwart old-hunker 
of the Lobby whom Benton fought, and who stood with fortitude 
the thunder of Silas Wright, let him come forward and give 
us a specimen hair from his brave old wig. Let him organize 
the third house and make it regular ; for late Congresses have 
not even been dignified Lobbies. 

Do I see amongst these great knights of the Lobby my old 
friend who wishes a self-respecting government to behave itself 
at once, neglect the great considerations of empire no longer, 
and rebuild the levees of the mighty Mississippi ? I do! 
His honest face shines with its wonted fires. He is a little 
deaf on one side ; but it does not affect the sonorousness of his 
elocution, nor make him swerve one hair from his intent. He 
fought in the Confederate Army, but he laid down his arms 
like a man. He knew when he was whipped. From that day 
to this, he has accepted the arrangement of bunting as we ten- 
dered it to him upon the 'end of a pole. He kneels to the judg- 
ment of Heaven and the comities of time. Yes, he will take 
something, as in former days. 

We see him wipe his magnificent brow, and grow slightly 
more pronounced in the Southern foreshortenings and inflec- 
tions. We see his forefinger extended, and that oath which 
has done more service on great occasions than the involuntary 
prayer come forth with the rare intensity of a low whisper. 

When he sees the alluvial of his country running by the 
thousands of tons into the Gulf of Mexico, — the richest soil 
under the providence of Heaven, with capacity for several 



86 THE LOBBY AND ITS GENTRY. 

nations to the square acre, — to build up Cuba and that foreign 
archipelago which is merely the delta of the Mississippi. 

Stop ! says he, " are not the West Indies of volcanic forma- 
tion ? " 

Volcanic, of course ! That's where the wrong and devasta- 
tion lie. Left to their volcanic selves, they would be barren as 
the burning -marl ; but it is our alluvial which clothes them 
green and makes them teem with sugar, indigo, and tobacker. 
Yes, he will have some Havanny tobacker, though he despises 
the fatality which produces it. 

And my lobby friend, with unfailing resources, spirits, and 
individualism, unfolds' again his olden tale. A few thousand 
miles of embankment, at a few thousand dollars a mile, will 
narrow the Mississippi and each of its arteries, and correspond- 
ingly deepen them. Hence you save all that you spend for 
improving rivers ; you make every great river navigable the 
year round ; you can build railroads on your levees. And, 
instead of five million bales of cotton you make fifteen million. 
Mark this, and wonder at the blindness of human governments ! 
Do you spend the Treasury's money to accomplish such a 
result? Oh, no! You give merely that useless credit which 
blesses him that gives and him that takes ; you give merely 
the indorsement of the United States to the bonds of a Levee 
Company, which relieves the Federal government from the 
jealousy of the states in undertaking local work. The Levee 
Corporation accomplishes its object, collects taxes on all staples 
raised on the redeemed territory, meets the interest on the 
bonds, and pays the principal when they fall due in twenty 
years. Oh, Chiralrickards ! 

Do you still harp on your state rights, and prefer to be taxed 
by a construction company instead of by your government ? 
Show me that stock with which your pockets are filled ! 
Whose image and superscription is it ? If men would render 
frankly unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's how much 
less would they have to render unto God ! 



CHAPTER VII. 



A RUNNING HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT SCANDAL, 

Lest we might be discouraged in our day by the presumption 
that we live in the only dishonest period of the Government, it 
will be a duty of solace rather than of scandal to show that a 
percentage of evil has always been present in the public coun- 
cils and that episodes of impurity and treachery in the adminis- 
tration have been sufficiently frequent to excite the gravest 
apprehensions and indignations of their day. 

In every case, however, the public sentiment in reserve has 
been strong enough to wash out the stain. Our first scandals 
referred to speculations in the public lands and the public funds. 

The State of Georgia was the first to inaugurate a land swin- 
dle in 1789. It sold out to these private companies pre-emption 
rights to tracts of land ; these companies were called the South 
Carolina Yazoo, the Virginia Yazoo, and the Tennessee Yazoo ; 
the whole amount of land disposed of was fifteen and a half 
millions acres, and the sum agreed to be paid was upwards of 
two hundred thousand dollars. Subsequently the same lands 
were sold to other companies because the first purchasers insisted 
upon making their payments in depreciated Georgia paper. 
Hence arose the controversy on the celebrated Yazoo claims, 
so-called. 

1798. This year is notable in the chronicles of Congress 
for the first scandalous breach of decorum that was ever wit- 
nessed in that body. It occurred in the lower House during 
the balloting for managers to conduct the impeachment of 
Blount, and the chief parties to it were Roger Griswold of Con- 
necticut and Mathew Lyon of Vermont. A number of the 

(87) 



88 RUNNING HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT SCANDALS-. 

members had collected about the bar of the House, and among 
them was Lyon, who in loud tones indulged in abuse of the Con- 
necticut members for their course with reference to a measure 
that had just before been under discussion, declaring that he 
entertained a serious notion of moving into Connecticut for the 
purpose of fighting them on their own ground. Griswold 
retorted by saying "If you come, Mr. Lyon, I suppose you will 
wear your wooden sword !" in allusion to Lyon's having been 
cashiered and to a rumor that he had been drummed out of the 
army while compelled to wear a wooden sword. At this Lyon 
spat in his face, for which he was about to be subjected to bodily 
punishment by Griswold when friends interposed and prevented 
it. Immediately the Speaker, who had previously quitted the 
chair, resumed it and stated the facts to the House which 
resulted in a motion for Lyon's expulsion. This motion being 
referred to a committee of privileges, the latter quickly reported 
a resolution for expulsion accompanied by a full statement of 
the facts. But Lyon's Democratic friends obstinately opposing 
the resolution it was only by a majority of five votes that the 
House proceeded to consider the subject in Committee of the 
Whole ; and then, not content with the report already made, 
required that the witnesses should again testify. Lyon in a 
speech against the resolution jeopardized his defense by using 
a vulgar and indecent expression which became the basis of a 
fresh charge. One of the witnesses who had testified, to the 
fact that Lyon had been cashiered was Senator Chipman of his 
own State. Lyon stated in his speech, by way of rebuttal, that 
he had once chastised Chipman for an insult, which drew from 
the latter a full account of the affair, placing Lyon in an unenvi- 
able position. After one ineffectual effort on the part of the 
opposition/ who were unwilling to lose even one vote, to substi- 
tute a reprimand for expulsion, the resolution was lost. This 
unsatisfactory termination of the action of the House, intensify- 
ing instead of allaying the resentment of Griswold, he deter- 
mined himself to punish Lyon. Upon the occasion of his first 
appearance in the House after the decision Lyon was reading 



GRISWOLD CANES LYON. 89 

in his seat when Griswold approached and commenced beating 
•him on the head with a cane. Lyon arose in defense of him- 
self, and a struggle of some minutes duration ensued in which 
he rushed to .the fire-place and seized the tongs but was felled 
to the floor by Griswold who closed with and continued beating 
him until they were separated by the friends of the vanquished 
Democrat. The House being now called to order, there was a 
demand made for the expulsion of both Griswold and Lyon, 
but the resolution offered for that purpose was defeated. 

Lyon is further notorious as being the first to suffer penalty 
under the Sedition Law then recently passed. A principal 
charge against him was that he wrote a letter which was pul> 
lished in a Vermont paper, stating that with the President 
" every consideration of the public welfare was swallowed up in 
a continual grasp for power, an unbounded thirst for ridiculous 
pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice," etc. He was con- 
victed' and sentenced to four months imprisonment and to pay 
a fine of one thousand 'dollars. During his. imprisonment he 
was re-elected to Congress, and, after serving out the term of 
his sentence he appeared in the House and took his seat, where- 
upon a resolution for his expulsion was offered, the causes alleged 
being " that he had been convicted of being a malicious and 
seditious person, of a depraved mind and wicked and diabolical 
disposition, guilty of publishing libels against the President, 
with design to bring the Government of 1 the United States into 
contempt." But this resolution also was defeated, although it 
received a bare majority vote, and Lyon kept his seat. 

The house, during the session of 1798, refused to pass a 
resolution previously adopted in the" senate to authorize Thomas 
Pinckney to receive certain presents which in accordance with 
custom had been tendered him by the courts of Madrid and 
London at the close of his missions thither, and which he had 
refused to accept because of the constitutional provision relat- 
ing to presents from foreign powers. The resolution was 
rejected on grounds of public policy as was afterwards declared 
by unanimous vote of the house. 



£0 RUNNING HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT SCANDALS. 

The seat of government was removed to Washington in 1800, 
but it had been established here only a short time when the 
building used as the War Office was burned and many valuable 
papers were destroyed. Within a few months after this occur- 
rence the Treasury building took fire, and although important 
documents were lost the damage was not so great as in the 
former case. The violence of party feeling which character- 
ized the times, imputed these occurrences to the design of 
public officers in seeking to destroy the evidence of their 
deficiencies. 

1804. The Federal Judge of the District Court of New 
Hampshire was this year tried on an impeachment during the 
previous Congress for willfully sacrificing the rights of the 
government in a case tried before him, and for drunkenness 
and profanity on the bench. He did not appear at the trial 
before the Senate, but a petition was received from his son 
representing that the Judge was insane and praying to be 
heard by counsel. Against some opposition the prayer was 
granted and testimony was offered tending to prove the fact 
of his insanity. To this it was answered that his insanity, if 
it existed, was the result of habitual drunkenness, and the 
impeachment was sustained. 

1804. The impeachment of Judge Chase of the Supreme 
Court followed closely upon the above and was the work of the 
Jeffersonians who were in a majority in the house. Chase was 
a Federalist and had made himself extremely obnoxious to his 
political opponents by including in his charges to the grand 
juries of his circuit political dissertations. In one of these he 
had condemned the action of Congress in repealing a late 
Judiciary Act, had depreciated the change in the constitution 
of Maryland dispensing with the property qualification of voters, 
and had dwelt with some emphasis upon certain proposed 
changes in state laws which he considered pernicious. His 
ability made him an object of fear to his opponents hardly less 
than his obnoxious doctrines subjected him to their hatred, and 
they determined to make this an instance of popular vengeance. 



JUDGE CHASE IMPEACHED. 91 

On motion of John Randolph a committee of investigation was 
appointed for the purpose of inquiring into his official conduct, 
but they were compelled to turn back five years into his record 
before they could discover much against him which would oifer 
a semblance ol justification for his impeachment, and they finally 
concluded to present his action in the Callender and Fries cases 
as affording the least defensible points in his judicial adminis- 
tration. He was accordingly impeached and preparations were 
made to prosecute him at the next session. The articles of 
impeachment were eight in number. In addition to those 
founded on his conduct in the cases named, two articles were 
based on his charge to the grand jury referred to. A month 
was given to the Judge to prepare his defense.- It was a 
remarkable scene when the case came to trial. The Vice- 
President, Burr, was under indictment for murder and red with 
the blood of Hamilton, while the man impeached was a signer 
of the Declaration of Independence, sixteen years a judge, and 
pure and venerable. Luther Martin, a drunken genius and a 
Federalist, made a wonderful speech for Chase, and he was 
acquitted on a majority of the articles while in no case were 
two-thirds of the votes cast for his conviction. John Randolph 
played Ben. Butler in this trial and wanted judges made 
removable by joint resolution. He even opposed paying Chase's 
witnesses, an act so like Butler's at a later day as to arouse a 
smile in the reader. 

In 1805, Mr. Dallas, father of the subsequent Vice-President, 
was unofficially charged with having pocketed six thousand 
five hundred and ninety-eight dollars, for three months services 
as state paymaster during the whisky insurrection. 

In 1806, the Federalists charged Jefferson's administration 
with voting two million dollars in secret session to bribe France 
to compel Spain to come to some reasonable arrangement as to 
the boundaries of Louisiana. 

In the same year, 1806, a draft was found amongst the effects 
of a Kentucky merchant tending to show that Judge Sebastian 
had been a pensioner of Spain. The same was charged against 



92 RUNNING HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT SCANDALS. 

General James Wilkinson, Commander-in-Chief of the Ameri- 
can Army. About this time Aaron Burr conceived his 
scheme of flllibustering in the Spanish Colonies, which has led 
to a very gaseous romance in our history. Burr's whole career 
shows that he was a sensationalist with little ballast of charac- 
ter or mind. Wilkinson was a military genius without sincerity, 
and he was court-martialed twice, and vindicated by his talents 
rather than by the facts. John Randolph was challenged by 
Wilkinson in 1808, and John Smith, a senator from Ohio, was 
set apart for expulsion by John Quincy Adams on the charge 
of complicity with Burr's treason, but a majority only voted to 
expel. „ , 

In 1809, an intricate and prolonged judicial and congressional 
process arose out of a claim by Edward Livingstone of Louisi- 
ana, — who had been a defaulter as Jefferson's District Attorney 
of New York, — for reclaimed lands known as the Batture in 
front of New Orleans. Livingstone bought the Batture, condi- 
tional upon his recovering it by suit from the city. The court 
of final resort decided that it was his and he paid ninety thou- 
sand dollars for it, but the citizens combined against him and 
dispossessed him. Jefferson believed that he was an unprinci- 
pled speculator, and the militia were paraded and the dikes on 
the property broken down. Livingstone sued the marshal 
who had dispossessed him and sued also Mr. Jefferson. The 
Supreme Court at Washington put Livingstone in possession 
and after indefatigable exertions he got the property only to 
find that his title was defective ; but he compromised with the 
other claimants so that the fourth which he obtained netted 
him a handsome fortune. 

We have omitted in this sketch any reference to Albert 
Gallatin and Mr. Breckenridge, both men of national reputation 
who were in much responsible for the whisky insurrection in 
western Pennsylvania. Gallatin was a Swiss who became a 
United States Senator, Secretary of the Treasury, and Minister 
to Russia, — one of the most remarkable men we have produced 



/ 
RUNNING HSITORY OP GOVERNMENT SCANDALS. 93 

who lived to be more than four-score and had the greatness to 
decline offices greater than he had ever filled. 

In 1809, prolonged litigation and scandal arose over the 
case of the British Sloop " Active " which had been seized by 
her American crew and taken by 'a Pennsylvania State cruiser. 
Connecticut men seized her and Pennsylvanians recaptured 
her. A Pennsylvania Judge, despite an injunction from a 
Congressional Committee, ordered the prize to be sold. Congress 
reversed the decision of the State Court, but Bittenhouse, the 
Pennsylvania Treasurer, held as indemnity against his personal 
bond the certificates of federal debt in which the prize money 
had been invested. His estate was sued by a subsequent State 
Treasurer. This led to a conflict between militia acting for 
the general government and for the state. The government 
triumphed, and punished the resistants. 

It was in 1810 that Congress set apart one day in the week 
'for private bills. 

In 1811, the charter of the Bank of the United States expired, 
and the offer of a bonus of one million and a quarter failed to 
secure a renewal. 

In 1812, John Henry, an Irish adventurer, naturalized, 
brought on a great scandal by accepting a commission to detach 
the New England States from the Union, and then receiving 
fifty thousand dollars from President Madison. 

In 1813, Clay and Calhoun united in a successful effort to 
expel newspaper reporters from the floor, where they had long 
been sitting, to the gallery where they could hear nothing. 

In 1814 the Yazoo claims were settled by the issue of scrip 
to the amount of eight million dollars to the claimants, most 
of the money going to a set of sharks who had bought the 
claims for a trifle. 

In 1815, Dallas's scheme for a National Bank with thirty- 
five million dollars capital was adopted. Calhoun carried it 
through the house. The next year three hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars was voted to the Cumberland Road, the system 
of fortifications was provided for and the first public buildings 



94 RUNNING HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT SCANDALS. 

outside of Washington were resolved upon. Congress also 
voted itself one thousand five hundred dollars a year per man 
in place of six dollars a day, and in the same session a pre- 
emption right for settlers on the public lands was adoptefl. 

When the books were opened for the Second United States 
Bank twenty-five million dollars was subscribed, and three 
million dollars more were taken by Stephen Girard who huck- 
stered it out to other bankers. Branches were established 
from the present bank in Philadelphia, at Boston, New York, 
Baltimore, Portsmouth, Providence, Middletown, Washington, 
Richmond, Charleston, Norfolk, Savannah, Lexington, New 
Orleans, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chillicothe, Pittsburg, Fayette- 
ville, and Augusta. At that time the public debt was one hun- 
dred and five million dollars and the revenue forty-seven mil- 
lion dollars. Jefferson vetoed the bill making the bank pay a 
bonus of one million five hundred thousand dollars, as well,as 
all dividends upon the public stock which it held for internal 
improvements. The bank grew corrupt almost immediately, 
and the State of Ohio refused to pay the tax upon its two 
branches. This Bank was a source of annoyance, scandal, and 
corruption until President Jackson finally closed it out. Amos 
Kendall's biographer summed up the subsequent history of that 
Bank in 1873 : 

" Despairing of a recharter from congress, the Bank pur- 
chased an act of incorporation from the Pennsylvania Legisla- 
ture, and still carried on its operations under the name of the 
Bank of the United States. In common with the other State. 
Banks it stopped payment in 1837, and never resumed. Though 
declaring its entire individual ability, it discouraged a general 
return to specie payments to the last, and when the other 
banks could no longer be restrained it threw off the mask and 
exposed its insolvency. Its entire capital of thirty-five millions 
of dollars was dissipated and lost. Such a record as its books 
exhibited of loans to insolvent political men, evidently without 
expectation of repayment, of debts due by that class of men 
charged to profit and loss, of loans to editors and reckless spec- 



THE NATIONAL BANK SCANDAL. 95 

ulators, and of expenditures for political electioneering and 
corrupt purposes, was never before exhibited in a Christian 
land. The ambitious author of all this ruin, who had aspired 
with the aid of his political allies to govern the government of 
the United States, and through his cotton speculations control 
the exchanges of the commercial world, and had been carried 
on men's shoulders as a sort of demi-god, had resigned the 
Presidency of the Bank and retired to a private life, where he 
died miserably with the disease which consumed Herod of old." 

Mr. Horace Clarke of New York, exposed in the winter of 
1872, a plot against him, the principal figure in which was a 
Committee Clerk named Cowlam. Mr. Negley, of Pittsburgh, 
introduced a resolution in the House, which had been preceded 
by alarming telegraphic despatches from Cowlam to Clarke, to 
this effect : " Honorable Clarke j I do not know you ! " Hence 
the startling information I give you is the warning counsel of 
an honorable friend and the secretary of Benjamin Butler. 
An attempt is to be made to pizen you. A dreadful conspiracy 
is planned. ' Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed.' Bewair !" 

To this, Clarke responded characteristically with an essay 
several reams long, breathing an essence of a gentleman, a 
statesman, sweet bread and peas. 

Another telegraph-despatch rejoined from Cowlam. The 
conspiracy was the most dreadful known since the days of Guy 
Fawkes, and headed by resolute and extraordinary men. One of 
these gigantic freebooters was to rise in Congress and point the 
way to the booty, and all the rest were to fill the breach. " Be 
warned," says Cowlam, " for my intentions never were sinister, 
since I am the secretary of Benjamin Butler." 

A lawyer was sent down by the Owl Line, and he called on 
Cowlam. For this disinterested savior of the Union Pacific 
Road, he saw a youth of a freckled physiognomy, with eyes 
which sparkled at the rattle of pennies, and whiskers blown 
out from his chops, as if at the vigor of his own windiness. 
This was the rescuer of the corporation ; and he pointed out, 
after much mystery, the dangerous authority who was to have 



96 RUNNING HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT SCANDALS. 

mounted the barricades. It was Negley, calmly arranging Ms 
hair at a glass. 

The lawyer at once stuck Cowlam's correspondence in the 
hands of the immaculate Jim Brooks. When Negley mounted 
the breach, Jim Brooks appeard at the sally-port, and presented 
the veracious Cowlam correspondence. Negley fell into the 
moat, Cowlam disappeared by .volatile evaporation, and Jim 
Brooks slapped his hand over his pocket, and exclaimed: 

" The honor of congress has been maintained by me to the 
extent of deserving fifty more shares of Mobilier for my dear 
little son-in-law ! " 

An enormous amount of forgery, lobbying, bribery, and liti- 
gation has taken place over land claimed under Spanish, 
French, and Mexican titles. Each of these claims has been in 
the nature of a romance. The Bastrop claim was the pretext 
of Aaron Burr's descent of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. 
The Limantour claim, so called from a very noble appearing 
old French gentleman named Jose Yves Limantour who prose- 
cuted it, is described below. 

Real Estate valued in California which had continually 
increased since the acquisition of that State were among other 
causes depressed between 1854 and 1858 by the' uncertainty of 
land titles resulting from the numerous and fraudulent claims 
set up to property f,hat had been purchased in good faith and 
long held by its occupants. Of these claims the most distin- 
guished for audacity and extravagance were those of Jose" Yves 
Limantour, by birth a Frenchman. His claims included four 
square leagues of land on the San Francisco Peninsula, embrac- 
ing about half of the most valuable part of that city, Alcatraz 
and Yerba Buena Islands and the Farralores together with lands 
in other parts of the state — in all about a hundred square leagues, 
and he asserted his right to the same on the ground of a grant 
made to him by Governor Micheltorena in payment for mer- 
chandise and money advanced by him to the latter ten years 
before. The Board of Land Commissioners created by act of 
Congress in 1851 having confirmed his claims, an appeal was 



A LITTLE CREDIT MOBILIER. 91 

taken to the United States District Court, and the following 
quotation from the opinion of the Judge rendered in 1858 dis- 
closes the enormity of the fraud and the means resorted to for 
its accomplishment : 

" Whether we consider the enormous extent or the extraor- 
dinary character of the alleged concessions to Limantour, the 
official positions and the distinguished antecedents ol the prin- 
cipal witnesses who have testified in support of them, or the 
conclusive and unanswerable proofs by which their falsehood 
has been exposed — whether we consider the unscrupulous and 
pertinacious obstinacy with which the claims now before the 
court have been persisted in — although six others presented to 
the Board have long since been abandoned — or the large sums 
extorted from property-owners in this city as the price of the 
relinquishment of these fraudulent pretentions ; or, finally, the 
conclusive and irresistible proofs by which the perjuries by which 
they have been attempted to be maintained have been exposed, 
and their true character demonstrated, it may safely be affirmed 
that these cases are without a parallel in the judicial history 
of the country." 

Before its conquest by the United States a very considerable 
portion of the best agricultural lands in California had been 
granted to individuals by the Mexican Government, and the 
boundaries of these grants had been loosely described. By the 
treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo the United States agreed not to 
disturb the titles so vested, but the greatest difficulty has been 
encountered in ascertaining the extent and limitations of such 
grants. This in part explains the uncertainty of land titles 
which has occasioned so much confusion and annoyance and 
which has been the source of a large proportion of the fraud and 
litigation that has charactei ized the history of that state. No 
sooner had the motley crowd of adventurers" who had congrega- 
ted from all parts of the world upon the shores of California, 
discovered the nature and uncertainty of the title to the lands 
there than forthwith sprang up from among them a host of 
claimants and counter-claimants under alleged Spanish and 
7 



98 EUNNING HISTORY OP GOVERNMENT SCANDALS. 

Mexican grants, bearing aloft in their hands the forged docu- 
ments, covered by a superabundance of seals, to which they 
pointed as evidence of their rights. About eight hundred claims 
were presented to the Board of Commissioners provided for the 
emergency, half of which number they confirmed and the other 
half they rejected for manifest fraud and informality. Nine- 
teen thousand one hundred and forty-eight square miles, was 
the area of land covered by these claims. On appeal to the 
district courts many of those rejected by the Board were allowed 
and some that had received the sanction of the Board were dis- 
allowed. Even now on the docket of the Supreme Court of the 
United States this business is well represented, and so far from 
being settled it yet affords employment and lucrative pay to our 
army of attorneys and clerks. The General Law Office has done 
a goodly share of the labor involved, but it has marked against 
it this passage quoted from TuthilPs history of California : " It 
was a grievance loudly complained of, that an appeal from the 
survey made necessary a journey to Washington to watch pro- 
ceedings under a subordinate of the Land Office, and many a 
disappointed claimant has come home, alleging that the party 
which accommodated the clerk with the largest loan won the 
decision." 

During Pierce's administration the Clerk of the Congres- 
sional Committee of claims, Abel R. Corbin, was detected and 
exposed in the act of black-mailing some merchants of Boston 
under -the pretense of saving them taxation. He was paid one 
thousand dollars but the disclosure lost him his clerkship. A 
special report of a blistering nature was made on the case by 
Hon. Benjamin P. Stanton. Corbin had been brought to Wash- 
ington by Senator Benton, whose organ he had edited at St. 
Louis. After his exposure he removed to New York ; with 
means obtained from his first wife, who was much his senior, he 
acquired a moderate fortune by speculation. Years after his 
humiliation at Washington he contrived to marry a maiden 
sister of President Grant, and it was he who devised the scheme 
of selling a house which he owned to the admirers of his brother- 



RUNNING HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT SCANDALS. 99 

in-law. The house passed out of Corbin's hands into Grant's 
and was again sold to one Bowen who was induced to surrender 
it by the promise of controlling the local offices of the District 
of Columbia ; a new set of admirers again purchased the same 
dwelling for Gen! Sherman. Corbin went into a desperate 
speculation with Pisk, Gould, Smith, and other unscrupulous 
gamblers, on the memorable " black Friday " of 1869. Atten- 
tion was then called to his previous history and I recovered 
Stanton's report from the Document room and printed it sim- 
ultaneously in Chicago and New York. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 



NOTABLE TOWN-CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 

The Capitol of a great nation will inevitably draw to it per- 
sons of quaint idiosyncracies. Amongst the celebrated men 
and women who have flourished in the city, Lorenzo Dow and 
his wife Peggy may be mentioned. Dow died in Washington 
and was buried on Fourteenth Street in the northern part of 
the town. Ann Royall was another singular being who pub- 
lished abusive books and papers from her nest, on Capitol Hill. 
Many aged claimants and people with grievances have worried 
out their days around the Capitol. Inventors and people with 
ambitious schemes will continue as o in all ages to beseige their 
government at its place of residence, and some of these become 
chronic afflictions. 

Amongst the three Or four thousand Washington clerks 
recorded in the Blue Book of the United States is that of 
Charles L. Alexander, inscribed in the book of 1867 as a 
clerk in the sixth Auditor's office, but better known in the 
former Agricultural Bureau of the Interior Department. He 
has, or had, a brother also in the government service, and sev- 
eral years ago their father was favorably, yet painfully known, 
to many people in Washington, as passing by the title of " the 
Earl of Stirling and Hereditary Lieutenant of her Majesty in 
the Provinces of Nova Scotia, including New Brunswick and 
Upper and Lower Canada," and as having suffered and strug- 
gled much between the peerage and the gaol, between conscious 
right and imputed crime. The old man passed away in the 
sad satisfaction of having done and lost his best to establish 
the honor of his name and the estate of his children. These 
latter are still zealously at work, one in England and one here, 
(100) 



lord Stirling's case. 101 

searching the libraries and the old book-stalls and explaining 
law and genealogy ; and the subject of our notice amongst us is 
now turning gray, as much with this inherited responsibility as 
with years. Dependent upon this government salary, he is 
still frequently seen at the library of Congress, prying into the 
" Force Collection " in the infinitesimal hope that there the lost 
link may have been hidden away. He says that his race have 
been treated badly ; that his father never had a charitable hear- 
ing ; and that while he is translating and compiling in growing 
age for the price of bread, his immense property is the spoil 
of squatters and irreconcilable relatives. This is no delusion of 
this man ; it is an inherited lawsuit, complete in every proof 
and paper, save only that a Scottish court, after one of the most 
remarkable trials in history, pronounced a part of the papers to 
be forged, while they exonerated his father. But had you or I 
succeeded to this monument of evidence j impregnated with our 
father's faith, we should have had thrice the presumption of its 
validity that we may have already by examining it. Of all the 
stories of lost heirs it is the most persuasive. 

To begin this case where it starts itself: 

In 1621 King James I. granted to one of his courtiers and 
Privy Councillors, Sir William Alexander, the territory of 
Nova Scotia, and in 1628 Charles I. added thereto the whole 
of Canada, soon after, also, raising him to the peerage by the 
title of " Viscount Canada and Earl of Stirling," and the same 
to descend to his heirs male. Five Earls of Stirling existed in 
all, and the fifth one, dying without issue, in 1739, left the 
title " dormant," until, in 1759, Mr. William Alexander, Sur- 
veyor General of the State of New Jersey, appeared, and peti- 
tioned the sovereign for the recognition of his honors. The 
same was disallowed by a committee of the House of Lords ; 
but many of the better English noblemen conceded it, and he 
always passed as the Earl of Stirling down to the day of his 
death, which occurred at Albany, in 1783. He was the cele- 
brated General Lord Stirling of our Revolutionary War, and 
ancestor, through a daughter of the Duer family, of New York. 



102 NOTABLE TOWN-CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 

He commanded at one time or another, nearly every American 
brigade in the Revolution, carried a wardrobe of four hundred 
and twelve garments, among them fifteen night-caps, fifty-eight 
vests, and one hundred and nineteen pairs of hose, and once, 
when he shot a deserter, the latter, looking to Heaven, cried, 
" Oh ! Lord, have mercy on me ! " " No, you scoundrel ! " 
cried Stirling, " I won't have any mercy on you whatever ! " 
Stirling established iron works, achieved distinction, and died 
rich, and his descendants, satisfied with their republican 
inheritance, have never troubled themselves about the Scottish 
earldom and estate. After General Alexander was rebuffed 
by Parliament, in 1762, the title again lay dormant for fifty- 
three years, when in 1815, an entirely new claimant appeared, 
to the consternation of the Scottish Chiefs. 

This was Alexander Humphreys, the grandson of a Presby- 
terian minister at Dublin, Ireland, named John Alexander, 
and the son of a rich merchant of Birmingham, who had mar- 
ried the above clergyman's daughter. In one- of the brief 
periods of peace between England and Napoleon, this Alex- 
ander Humphreys visited France with his father, when, war 
suddenly recommencing, both were seized and detained twelve 
years. The father died in exile ; the mother in his absence ; 
the son reappeared in England in 1814, thirty years of age, 
with a foreign wife, the mother of these American clerks. He 
became a school teacher at Worcester, and afterward proprietor 
of the school, and was much of the time in straitened circum- 
stances. But while in exile a mysterious and supernatural 
communication had been made to him by a fortune-teller, one 
Mademoiselle Le Normand, the friend of his wife, — that he 
was the heir to great honors and vast estates, which he should 
secure after many toils and sufferings. 

The theory of his most charitable opponents was built upon 
the gigantic presumption that this woman, Le Normand, and 
others had prepared voluminous forgeries in the French, Latin, 
and early English manuscripts, with the intention of connect- 



lord Stirling's case. 103 

ing Humphreys with the dormant peerage of Stirling, and that 
he had been their dupe for twenty-seven years ! 

"Such conspirators would require the possession of immense 
and ubiquitous skill and intelligence ; a knowledge of the 
shifting histories of the Canadas and Nova Scotia, and of all 
their forms of law, of Scottish jurisprudence and genealogy, of 
various penmanships, seals, and heraldries, and the entire- 
science and symbolism of a peculiar province and its various 
eras. Yet it is undoubtedly true that this presumed Earl of 
Stirling received during a long period of years, by mysterious 
posts and expresses, by silent messengers, and by the agency 
of obscure peasants in Ireland and elsewhere, a new document 
in every emergency, now a map, and now a genealogical tree, 
and now a new writ or patent ; and these seem to have been 
rivalled by the number of real documents bearing in his favor, 
collected by his learned lawyers in Canada and America ; for 
among his suppositions was that when the American General 
Stirling presented his claims to "this peerage, parties in his 
interest stole and scattered the papers of the future (present) 
and legitimate claimant, and that many of them were conveyed 
to America. 

However this maybe, the new claimant enlisted in his favor, 
as attorney and agent, Mr. Thomas Christopher Banks, the 
author of a book upon dormant and extinct peerages (who died 
in 1859, at the age of ninety years), by whose suggestion he 
took his mother's name of Alexander, and in 1825 he appeared 
at an election of Scottish Representative Peers, and actually 
voted as the Earl of Stirling. The following year he instituted 
legal proceedings in Scotland to be declared heir to his mother, 
and entered papers, proving the existence of a charter of 
Novodamus. This charter was alleged to be a second charter 
issued to the original Earl of Stirling, admitting not only his 
male but his female heirs to inherit his title and estates, — 
for the present claimant, inheriting only from his mother, 
might have proved his descent, and still been no Earl of Stir- 
ling, had the males only inherited. To find this charter in the 



104 NOTABLE TOWN CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 

archives of Canada, Banks was despatched thither, and soon 
reported important discoveries. The claimant meantime retired 
to Worcester, engaged in correspondence with all parts of the 
world relative to his pretensions, and on the strength of his 
claim (one hundred million acres of land), received thirteen 
thousand pounds upon bonds granted by him for fifty thousand 
pounds. 

According to the Scottish law, a right of succession in 
pedigree can be obtained before a Sheriff's inquest, if there be 
no opponent claiming in precisely the same character ; and 
availing himself of this, Humphreys was declared in 1830 the 
great-great-great-grandson of William, first Earl of Stirling. 
Soon afterward he was declared heir to the great American pos- 
sessions of the same Earl, and he formally communicated the 
fact to the public .authorities of British America in terms 
almost befitting a sovereign newly restored to his dominions. 

This was the hey-day time of the new Earl, who seems 
throughout to have been a benignant, dignified, noble man, 
whether nobleman or not. He moved from Worcester, where 
he had been dunned by butchers and tradesmen, to fashionable 
quarters in London, and he opened an office under the eaves of 
the Parliament House, where he issued advertisements for the 
sale of territories in Canada and debentures on his American 
possessions. Eclat attended him and sympathy ; he preserved 
all the friendships of his youth, and the energy with which he 
pressed his rights in the peerage was demonstrated by his 
twice voting at Holy rood in elections, though under protest, by 
his creating Baronets of Nova Scotia, and by his petition, when 
Yictoria was crowned, to do homage as hereditary Lieutenant 
of Nova Scotia. He also forwarded, in 1888, a solemn protest 
to the English Prime Minister against appointing the Earl of 
Durham Governor-General of Canada. 

The novelty and daring of these measures aroused the jealousy 
of the Scottish Peers, and the Crown Lawyers of Scotland com- 
menced formidable proceedings to prove that Humphreys was 
not descended from the Earl of Stirling, and that he had no 



NOTABLE TOWN-CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 105 

pretensions to its name, title, or rights. In the course of this 
long investigation the same mysterious agency which had whis- 
pered his destiny to him, followed him with new proofs when 
any proof had failed, with a new document when any document 
was confounded. By post and by miracle the wonderful mis- 
sives came, to the confusion of the claimant no less than his 
adversaries, and they surrounded him with a maze of far-reach- 
ing data and infinite links of evidence, till his friends saw, what 
he was blind to see, that either this was the hand of Providence, 
or of devils, — ox forgery ! 

The Crown Lawyers believed the last, and, on the 29th of 
April thirty years ago, " Alexander Humphreys, or Alexander, 
pretending to be the ' Earl of Stirling,' " was arraigned in the 
prisoner's dock, before the High Court of Justiciary, to answer 
for the highest degree of the highest crime, next to murder 
only. 

And here the strange spectacle was presented of a man past 
the prime of life, with a mountain of evidence ready to fall upon 
him, befriended, even in the prisoner's dock, by George 
Charles D' Aquilas, Deputy Adjutant-General of the forces in 
Ireland, his former schoolmate. 

"Nothing on earth," said this chivalrous soldier, " would 
induce me to stand where I do before this court if I did not 
believe Lord Stirling to be incapable of doing a dishonorable 
action." 

The latter waived his privileges as a Peer to be tried by a 
higher court and by a jury of landed men only. There were 
four Judges on the bench, three lawyers in the defence, and 
fifteen jurymen in the box — a majority ,to make a verdict. 
Members of Sir Robert Peel's family testified to Humphrey's 
high character, and then the seven days' trial began, to the 
intense interest and excitement of all Scotland and the aristo- 
cratic world of Englishmen. 

You have not the space, and the subject is not now entitled, 
in a chapter of this nature, to the consideration which would 
permit one to follow out the labyrinths of this evidence, wherein 



106 NOTABLE TOWN-CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 

by experts, French and English, the signatures of priests like 
Fenelon and Kings like Charles I, the dates of extinct Colonial 
maps, the leaves of alleged old Bibles, inscriptions on alleged 
crumbled tombstones, letters half consumed by time, parchments 
strangely all destroyed by corrosion, save some excerpt, bearing 
solely upon the prisoner's right: — all these things you may find 
related, if you think this article of doubtful credit, in Townsend's 
Modern State Trials, in the second volume of Samuel Warren's 
Judicial Miscellanies, and in Archibald Swinton's report of this 
trial, issued at Edinburgh the year of its occurrence. The 
Earl of Stirling saw the fabric of his cause wormed through 
and- through by practical publicists and exceptional men of 
minute scholarship upon dates, doubts, and particles of circum- 
stances,, .till the whole edifice fell around him ; and yet, more 
wonderful still, while fraud upon fraud and forgery upon forgery 
lay revealed in the ruin, he himself stood alone and untouched, 
not a mite of evidence connecting him with any episode of the 
crime, however slight. The process was like that of picking, 
tint by tint and inch by inch, some perfect dream from the 
awakening slumberer, the delusion not all destroyed till the 
last gossamer veil is withdrawn ; and then in terrible shape the 
Earl of yesterday saw in himself the possible convict of to-mor- 
row. 

It was not so with the jury. They constructed the suppo- 
sition which I have already stated — that the Neapolitan wife 
of Alexander Humphrey's, in correspondence with Madame Le 
Normand — the D. D. Home, the Cagliostro, the wizard-demon 
of that period — had given the latter the family circumstances 
out of which Le Normand, by means of her large literary 
acquaintance and her talents, had put together the intricate 
block-work of this dangerous puzzle. 

The jury returned, after five hours' consideration, and unani- 
mously found that two sets of papers were forgeries ; that the 
two other sets of papers were not proven to be forgeries ; and 
that in neither case was the prisoner at the bar proven to have 
uttered any of them knowing it to be forged. 



CALEB CUSHING. 107 

The prisoner swooned, on hearing the verdict, and was car- 
ried out of the court insensible. 

This verdict must have settled the fate of Madame Le Nor- 
mand, if she had anything to do with the fortunes of this case — 
and the claimant swore to having borrowed four hundred thou- 
sand francs of her — for at the time of the trial she was aged 
seventy. 

. In 1842, Lord Ashburton came to America to conclude the 
treaty as to our Canadian boundaries, and then, for the first 
time, the people of Washington heard of the Earl of Stirling. 
He had come to say, firmly but courteously, to the American 
Government that they ought to buy his right in buying his land ; 
for the personal trial he had passed, established nothing against 
the legal validity of his title. He was still the hereditary 
Lieutenant of New Brunswick, Canada, and Nova-Scotia, and 
he demeaned himself as worthy of his rank. If he obtained no 
money here he obtained respect. His children passed into the 
civil service of the United States, and are well known as stern 
and implacable advocates of their cause. Here they have lived ; 
here is still their home, until Britain is kinder ; and no British 
sovereign holds more firmly to his shield with the motto " Dieu 
et mon Droit," than the children of Alexander, sixth Earl of 
Stirling, working in their government clerkships at two thou- 
sand a year. 

Seventy years of age is the learned dishing, the universal 
attorney for and against the government. His income is not 
less than forty thousand dollars a year, and his expenses are 
seventy-five cents a day, his clients paying for his stationery. 
He receives twenty-five thousand dollars per annum from the 
Mexican. Republic to defend it before the existing Commission, 
besides copious clerks' hire. There is a well accredited super- 
stition here that he makes his clerks work, and that lie sets 
them the example. Besides this fat thing, which gives him 
free office-rent, Gushing is literally the ultima ratio regum of 
the Federal Government. Mr. Akerman, coming from the 
wilds of the Ocmulgee, and knowing nothing of State Depart- 



108 NOTABLE TOWN-CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 

ment cases, flies to Mr. Cushing and retains him in forty or 
more. Mr. Bristow, the new Solicitor General, sees no other 
alternative. The Democratic election frauds in New York 
demand somebody to represent the Administration, and the 
President of the Baltimore Democratic Convention is the man. 
Mr. Seward leaned upon the arm of the delightful Caleb, and 
the latter was vulgarly alleged here to " run " the State Depart- 
ment. He is still the benevolent legal encyclopaedia of this 
anti-judicial period, — a political time when "the party" propo- 
ses to annihilate the Supreme Court because it will not upset 
the President into the bears' den of Congress, — and there 
appears to be nobody in the country who is so close to the offi- 
cial elbow. I write all this without mischief. Cushing is the 
Administration's only trusted legal adviser. Politics has gained 
so much upon law in the last few years that General Grant has 
to reach into a past civilization and fetch out John Tyler's Com- 
missioner to China and Franklin Pierce's Attorney-General. 
Who can explain this necessity, except on the ground that 
Evarts, Curtis, Trumbull, Hoar, and other large national men, 
make the administration uneasy by their " muchness " of char- 
acter and judgment, and that a fine old hack lawyer is prefer- 
red, to whom all generations are the same, whose manner never 
varies, and who universally disbelieves in everybody ? 

Cushing's character is what might be expected from a man 
of New England birth and domestic education, who began life 
by a renunciation of every conventional patriotism, and resolved 
simply to be very learned. Without any principles except a 
few business rules ; his decalogue ten general antipathies, cov- 
ering everything human ; no ballast but industry, and over all 
the facile complexion of affability — he has descended to us 
through seventy active years, and for forty-five of them he has 
been in incidental public life. He has had for clients nine 
administrations. His .only delight is work. It is his repose, 
his worship, his substitute for faith. To see him rise at five 
o'clock, breakfast frugally, and then, with almost sensual avid- 
ity, repair to his labor, is to teach us the divine economy of 



CALEB CUSIHNG. 109 

for a soul with that unwearying scavenger, the fly. It gives 
almost a human interest to a Yankee clock, and it links Caleb 
Cushing to his species. His only enjoyment is to go fishing, 
all alone, about twice a year, and he fishes with the intensity 
of a full moon, drawing a high tide by his assiduity. At a 
State dinner he is a delightful guest, full of ; anecdote, reminis- 
cences and suavity, but few suspect that all this is sheer employ- 
ment with him. He writes for the great reviews, the North 
American, Forney's Chronicle, etc., with abundant learning, but 
only as an attorney, affirmed or concealed. He went to the 
Mexican war for employment, but he had no belief in it. Wily, 
sly, wise, whatever he may be, he has no definite notion of the 
result which he influences. He is simply an automaton library 
and gazetteer, worked by perpetual motion in the unknown 
interest of Caleb Cushing. 

As a pleader in court, Cushing is without brillancy. He 
will give an owl the blues to listen to him. His three elements 
of success are learning, the long renown of nearly half a 
century's prominence, and almost conscienceless tenacity to the 
cause of his client. He had been eight years in Congress in 1843. 
He has been a tutor in Cambridge, a Supreme Judge in Massa- 
chusetts, and time and again in the State Legislature since 
1833. Author, codifier, foreign traveler, Prince in high society, 
wire-puller in politics, the moderator in that pandemonium 
after the angel Michael had defeated the slave party, Cushing 
has descended to us a political atheist, and it is a general 
remark among the lawyers here that his judgment is not worth 
ah office boy's. 

This it is to enter public life without intentions or sympa- 
thies, those two grand virtues — the one in man, the other in 
woman — which make the political son of Hermes. 

Solomon tried it longer than Caleb Cushing, and wound up 
his career with the same words: " Vanity of vanities ;" saith 
the lawyer. There is no reward to mere industry, but industry. 
A clock exists no more where it ceases to run. Put it in the 
town steeple or on the family mantel, and to its application is 



110 Notable town characters in Washington. 

superadded a sentiment, a duty, a beneficence. But Caleb 
Gushing runs entirely to himself. He neither tells the time 
nor knows it. He chews law books for fuel, and runs. 

By some one of those unaccountable inundations which drive 
wharf rats ashore, and make poor houses yawn, Beau Hickman 
has been alive at "Washington for fifty years and may be seen 
daily in the capitol, fluctuating between Downing's Restaurant 
and the reception room of the Senate, a consumptive old bum- 
mer, with curled moustaches, very fierce, and a ragged old 
blanket thrown across his shoulders, a cane in his hands, bor- 
rowed boots, a spotted brown neck-tie, and a gorgeously-figured 
vest. His left hand is always twisting his moustache up into 
additional fierceness, while his right leans heavily upon his 
cane to save him from the twinges of rheumatism. His face 
is not without imposing characteristics, and the old vagrant 
has fought age step by step, clutching on life desperately. 
His career is a mild exponent of the force of an original predi- 
lection for living off men of the world and amongst them. He 
came to Washington in the hey-day of Southern domination, 
was a convenient time-server, an amusing bar-room acquaint- 
ance, and a man of tailorly appearance, dressed in the height 
of splendor. For some time he kept his head level ; next he 
descended to being a harmless curiosity whose company paid 
for his extortion ; then he became the protege of gamblers and 
worse. What terrible struggles with hunger he has had, what 
secret misgivings of suicide, what human yearnings for death, 
what aroused instants of sincere and tearful shame, we may 
never know. A Wandering Jew in the world of politics* a 
dauntless outcast, too timid for crime, he has illustrated here 
the extremest miseries of the man who deliberately evades the 
social contract and trusts to the idle charities of the profligate 
of his own sex. The brave old vagrant is near the end of his 
days. The feet of invisible ravens show round his eyes. His 
stare of precipitate and grateful recognition grows more piteous. 
What loneliness ! What resources ! God help us all in our 
fight for existence. 



BEAU HICKMAN. 13 

He waiteth at the Senate door, 

And passing victims grips, 
His waxed moustache he stroketh o'er, 

His seedy beaver tips, 
« And he saith : " The good times come no more 

When Beau was full of chips." * 

He hobbles to the restaurant, 

And spendeth not a groat, « 

He wears a President's cast-off boots, 

And a gambler's overcoat ; 
And pines for a change in politics, 

By the Democratic vote. 

When two or three together be, 

He will unbidden come, 
And strike that goodly company, 

For currency and rum ; 
And they pay the impost hastily, 

Lest longer he might bum. 

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, 

Onward through life he goes ; 
Each morning sees him out of food, 

Each evening out of clothes- 
Something encountered, something, struck, 

Has earned a night's repose. 

Thanks, thanks to thee, my deathless Beau 

For the lesson thou hast taught; 
Thus on the fly in politics, 

Our chances must be caught, 
Thus on the anvil of much cheek 

Is fortune beat or bought. 

Across a vacant lot from the capitol building, you see a mar- 
ble yard next to an isolated street corner. Around the corner 
one door is an alley gate, wide enough for a wagon. A wicket 
in this gate will admit you into a clean little back yard, closed 
up by a small, two storied brick carpenter shop. This is the 
Government Instrument-maker ; down stairs are the cabinet- 
makers, up stairs are the brass workers. It is snug, secluded 



11 (1A NOTABLE TOWN CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 

and old-fashioned, a place you never suspect, going hastily by — 
without a signboard, with scarcely & sound to betray itself, a 
nook where one might wander by some accident and see quaint 
bits of individual character living there. Here the theodolites, 
field-glasses, and instruments of engineering upon far plains, 
mountains, and coasts, are so put together that they fit into 
bores small enough to be strapped upon a mule's back. For 
nearly twenty years these quiet instrument-makers have been 
working without a rival, just equal to the demands of the 
Government, building up its necessities. By a link their hum- 
drum lives are bound to the far adventurers, the Indian camp- 
ing grounds, the railways of the Rocky Mountains, galleries, 
the canons and sierras of the Pacific Slope. One might dwell 
in Washington for twenty years and never think to ask whence 
came the multitude of instruments which are lost, broken or 
captured upon the wilds of the far West. A little chance 
suggests the question and reveals the secret together. 

Not having been in the habit of holding any interviews, I 
resolved, one day, to call upon a celebrated corn doctor here, and 
while pretending to have him rid me of "bunion's" burdens, be 
really making some inquiries about the footprints of statesmen. 
This was a highly novel idea, because I have been two years 
studying heads here, with all the ardor of Gall and Spurzheim, 
and, as the subject is growing monotonous, I felt that the feet 
of great men would avail me as an extremity. So I rubbed 
up my memory with a stiff hair brush, and gave alertness to 
my faculty of hearing by means of a conch shell which*I keep 
as a gentle stimulant. After listening to this conch some time, 
speaking with such impressive emptiness, I can hear the foot- 
steps of the flies as they crawl up my sheet of foolscap. 

So, with all my antennas out, I dropped, in an indifferent 
way, into the sanctum of our greatest corn-surgeon, and asked 
him to cut four dollars' worth off, but not to hurry about it. 

The skillful chiropodist asked me to recline in a luxurious 
chair, and, while he prepared some occult salve to soften my 
pilgrim's pack, he gave me a large pile of corns to examine. 



THE CORN-DO CTOB'S EXPERIENCE. 113 

He had about one thousand hard corns of all sizes strung upon 
wire, as a merchant keeps his bills or charges on file. Some 
were nearly an inch square and looked like a section cufrout 
of a horse's hoof; others were little delicate corns no larger 
than those raised upon the branching feet of a young robin ; 
others were clear as isinglass, and might have made the prev- 
ious crystal window in the heel of Achilles ; while some were 
dark and muddy, and the coagulated blood at their centre made 
them resemble ossified violets or heart's-ease. What a memo- 
randa of mankind and womankind it was ! The story of tor- 
ture for vanity's sake ; of high heels consented to in the sacri- 
fice of love ; of man's pursuit of wealth, all day upon his feet, 
.and these horny milestones, the silently accumulating measure 
of his journey ; of weary -postmen bearing our letters from door 
to door, while the long, poignant ache rested within the boot 
unnoticed, like the doleful heartaches in the envelopes which 
they distributed ; of soldiers marching into the jaws of death, 
but recking less of the enemy's Minie balls than of those mis- 
siles which crush the feet at every stride. Here it was, the 
intensest epitome of woe ever hung up as a business museum. 

$ What do you keep them for, Doctor ? " I asked. 
*' " Curiosity," he said, " and also as an evidence that I have 
not lived in vain. If the man who gives a cup of cold water 
to one of these little ones, expects to be remembered in Heaven, 
what will they say up there when I appear with my linear half- 
mile of such corns as this ? " 

He showed right here a corn which looked like three silver 
half dollars that had been run over by a locomotive : 

"Didn't that make him 'ouch'," he said, "and yet "that 
disagreeable and ungrateful fellow had no sooner shed that 
corn than he turned round, and says : ' If I knew you'd a 
charged two dollars I'd. walked with it half a century first.' 
That corn ought to have been biled, and he fed on it. as it 
would hev agreed with the old flint stone." 

" So you think there is a religious aspect to your business, 
Doctor ? " 



114 NOTABLE TOWN CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 

" Yes ; I like to think so. So does everybody like to think 
that he is necessary and comfortable to have round. Yester- 
day there was a young lady here, whose foot looked like a slim 
new moon made out of ivory, with a corn peeping out behind 
it like a star. I cut it off for her, and she said : ' Oh ! Doctor, 
I feel as if I could fly.' And the young man who came with 
her asked me to give him the corn to put in his watch seal. 
The^ young lady says, 'Oh! pshaw, what for, John?' and he 
replied that he was too jealous to let anybody else keep it. 
Said I : ' Well, my friend, if you look at it through this mag- 
nifying glass you'll .find that it isn't a very handsome jewel.' 
He took it up, and saw what you can see now, if you want to ; 
for he didn't take the corn." 

I looked at the little delicate filament through the glass, and 
it immediately resolved into a whole cow's-hoof, with terraces, 
spikes, splinters, and at the summit of the gristly pyramid 
there was a red spot like the crater of a volcano. 

" Why," said I, " it is truly piling Pelion on Ossa." 

The Doctor now took my foot very much as if he were pick- 
ing at the flint of an old-fashioned musket, and, having moist- 
ened the corn, proceeded with three sorts of knives alternately 
to quarry off the. capstone. Then he cut all my nails with a 
machine which seemed to be a sort of juvenile guillotine, and 
having set a plaster upon the spot showed me through the glass 
a corn like a limekiln. 

" Why," said I, " it is as big as Mount Caucasus, and the 
ache of it was like a vulture's bite. Perhaps Prometheus was 
only a man with a perpetual corn." 

" I don't read mythology no more," he said, " since old 
Senator McDougall died. After going on a spree he always 
sobered up, the first thing, by getting his corns cut. He'd 
come here whether he had any corns or not, for he knew he 
deserved them ; and he would talk Persian, Greek, and Iroquois 
mythology indifferently. Once poor old Mac told me that he 
had been on a great spree and fell into an open sewer. 

" * Who are you ?' said the policeman. 



NOTABLE TOWN-CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 115 

" « Where did you find me V said Mac. 

"'Ina sewer.' • 

" i Then I must be Seward ! ' 

" When he told me that anecdote he laughed so that I nearly 
cut off the whole of his inferior phalanges." 

" But you didn't finish your scriptural account of corns. I 
don't remember that the Bible ever mentioned any other sort 
of sore but a boil, as in the case of Job." 

"No! but there are hundreds, of inferences which are a great 
comfort to me ; for I'm a Methodist. It's a comfort to me to 
believe that John Bunyan conceived the Pilgrim's footsore 
progress out of his own name. The whole Bible is full of the 
anointing of feet ; of the bearing up of feet by angels lest they 
be dashed against stones ; and on the human foot the nicest 
architecture of Providence was expended. The Roman arch 
was conceived out of the instep. Why, in this here foot of 
yours, there are twenty-six several bones. Look at irry little 
library, and see how many ingenious and noble men have writ- 
ten upon the foot. Here is Dr. Humphrey on ' the Human 
Foot and the Human Hand.' »Here is Craig's translation of 
the work by Meyer, of Zurich, called ' Why the Shoe Pinches.' 
Here is Professor Owens' essay to prove that the human foot is 
the last and farthest diverg'ence of man's anatomy from the 
nearest animals. Here is Meyer's model for a perfect and 
scientific shoe. Here is Craig's pamphlet against high-heels. 
We have plenty of literature on feet." 

"You might add the essays of the Anti-Corn Law League," 
I suggested, " and Ebenezer Elliott. But, Doctor do any of 
the great politicians come here ?"■ 

" Yes, all of them. There's a corn I cut off the little toe of 
Grant after Lee's surrender. It's the only wound he ever 
received in the war ; and I've been offered twenty-five dollars 
for it. There's one of George H. Thomas, a little fellow, and 
here are the principal scars of Sheridan, McClellan, Lincoln, 
the whole set. It's the only collection in the United States." 

I was now getting down to business, and I put out this ques- 
tion for a flyer : 



116 NOTABLE TOWN-CHARACTERS IN WASHINGTON. 

" Doctor, what sort of a foot has Grant ?" 

" A solid sort of a edifice," said the Doctor. " He's well sot 
on his astragali, but horseback has given him a pigeon-toed ten- 
dency. When he stands up and ain't thinking, the axes of his 
feet, if prolonged, pass through each other a rod ahead of him. 
He's a better officer than ossifier, and his shoemaker has taken 
a spite against me, so that he don't bear but one crop of corns 
a year. When old General Halleck was at the head of the army, 
he walked about so much, devising strategy, that he bore an 
entire new set every six weeks. He was fruitful as a tomato 
vine. Some men run as naturally to chalk as a schoolboy to a 
blackboard. Others are so stingy that a glove never pinches 
them. But, I hear steps, as of a man limping in the next room, 
and I presume it is one of the Pennsylvania delegation whose 
toes the tariff has abraded. Your corn has gone into the Ameri- 
can National Pedalion collection, and will be preserved fo*r the 
benefit of posterity. Good day, sir!" 



CHAPTEE IX. 

SOCIETY AND THE CITY FROM THE MADISONIAN TO THE EMANCI- 
PATION PERIOD. 

The custom of making New Year's calls in Washington is of 
comparatively recent origin. Mr. Madison, who had witnessed the 
interesting ceremony in the city of New York, in 1790 — then the 
seat of government — inaugurated the custom at the Executive 
Mansion, when President, Jan. 1st, 1810. Washington Irving 
was there in January, 1811, land in a letter to Henry Brevoort, 
describes Mrs. Madison as " a fine, portly, buxom dame, who has 
a smile and a pleasant word for everybody. Her sisters, Mrs. 
Cutts and Mrs. Washington, are like the two merry wives of 
Windsor ; but as to Jemmy Madison, ah ! poor Jemmy ! he is 
but a withered little apple-John." Francis Jeffrey of the Edin- 
burgh Review, who came out in 1812 to marry Miss Wilkes of 
New York, said' — ' i Mr. Madison looked like a schoolmaster dressed 
up for a funeral." When Mr. Madison asked Jeffrey on his pre- 
sentation—" what is thought of our war in England ?" — the latter 
replied, " it is not thought of at all." 

Mr. Madison was small in stature and dressed in the old style, 
in small clothes and knee-buckles, with powdered hair — was unos- 
tentatious in his manners and mode of life — but very hospitable 
and liberal in his entertainments ; with great powers of conver- 
sation, fall of anecdotes and not averse to a double entendre, 
though of the utmost purity of life. He was a thorough-bred 
Virginia gentleman, Jeffrey to the contrary notwithstanding. 

(117) 



118 



SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON. 




TAYLOE MANSION. 



< In August, 1814, the White House was burned by the British., 
and Mr. Madison removed to the Octagon, the residence of Colonel 

John Tayloe on the 
corner of New York 
Avenue and Tenth 
street — now the Bu- 
reau of Hydrogra- 
phy. Here he held 
his New Year's le- 
vee, in 1815, and 
here he signed the 
Treaty of Ghent, in 
the month of Febru- 
ary of the same year, 
in the circular room 
over the entrance-hall. In 1816 and 1817, Mr. Madison occu- 
pied the house at the north-west corner of Pennsylvania ave- 
nue and Nineteenth street, and here received his guests on the 
first day of those years. 

Mr. Monroe's first New Year's reception was held at the White 
House in 1818. The first term of Mr. Monroe's administration, 
from 1817 to 1821, has been pronounced by competent author- 
ity, the period of the best society in Washington. Gentlemen 
of high character and high breeding abounded in both Houses 
of Congress, and many of the foreign ministers were distin- 
guished for talent, learning, and elegant manners. The Baron 
Hyde* de Neuville represented the French aristocracy of the old 
regime, as Mr. Stratford Canning, now Lord Stratford de Red- 
clyffe, did that of Great Britain. 

Mr. Monroe was plain and awkward and frequently at a loss 
for conversation. His manner was kind and unpretending. 
Mrs. Monroe, a Kortwright of New York, was handsome and 
graceful, but so dignified as to be thought haughty. While in 
the White House Mrs. Monroe was out of health. Her daughter, 
Mrs. George Hay of Virginia, attended Madame Campan's 
famous boarding-school in Paris, and was there the intimai 



SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON. 119 

friend of Hortense Beauharnais, the mother of Louis Napoleon. 
Mrs. Hay was witty and accomplished and a great favorite in 
society. 

In 1822, the Marine Band* performed at the White House on 
New Year's day, as the custom has been ever since. In 1824, 
the doors of the White House were thrown open for the first 
time* on the 1st of January to the public. The Intelligencer - 
of the next day congratulates its leaders on the decorous 
deportment of the people on that occasion. 

The winter of 1825 was one of the most brilliant ever known 
in Washington. It was the period of the exciting election in 
the House of Representatives, when Mr. Adams, Mr. Clay, and 
General Jackson were candidates for the Presidency. The 
Marquis de la Fayette was here as the guest of Congress, and 
occupied apartments at Brown's Hotel. In the last week of 
December, 1824, Congress had voted him the munificent sum 
of 8200,000 for his Revolutionary services. On the 1st of Jan- 
uary, the reception at the President's was unusually brilliant— 
for among the guests were the Marquis de la Fayette,, and his 
son, George Washington Lafayette, Harrison Gray Otis of Bos- 
ton, the northern Chesterfield, Governor Gore of Massachu- 
setts, Stephen Van Rensselaer the Patroon, Rufus King, Mr. 
Lowell and Mr. Graham of Boston, Mr. Edward Lungston of 
Louisiana, Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Crawford, 
Mr. Everett, Mr. Wilde of Georgia, Mr. Hayne of South Caro- 
lina, General Jackson, and many other distinguished persons, 
with the ladies of their households — all resident in Washing- 
ton during that memorable winter and forming, a galaxy of tal- 
ent, beauty, and accomplishment which has never been sur- 
passed in any subsequent period of Washington Society. 

*The Marine Band of Washington has made music at every great entertain- 
ment, levee, funeral, or parade held at the Capital since its foundation. It was 
formerly esteemed the greatest band on the continent, but has of late years grown 
rusty and inferior. There are fifty pieces in it, and its leader, a Mr. Scala, re- 
ceives $75 a month, the men being all enlisted at $21 a month. They live out- 
side the barracks, marry, draw rations, keep shops, and are chiefly foreigners. 
This band needs overhauling. 



120 SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON. 

A grand entertainment was given on the evening of the 12th 
of January, 1825, by Congress to the Marquis de La Fayette at 
Williamson's, now Willard's, hotel. The management of the 
affair was entrusted to the Hon. Joel R. Poinsett, M. C. from 
S. C, Secretary of war in Mr. Van Buren's administration. 
This duty Mr. Poinsett discharged with admirable taste and to 
the entire satisfaction* of Congress and its guests. The com- 
pany assembled at six P. M., to the number of two hundred. 
Mr. Gaillard of S. C, President of the Senate, presided at one 
table — Mr. Clay of Ky., Speaker of the House,, at the other. 
The President of -the U. S., James Monroe, sat on one side of 
Mr. Gaillard, and La Fayette on the other. The latter was 
supported by Gen. Samuel Smith of Md., a hero of the Revolu- 
tion, and in the immediate vicinity with Rufus King, Gen. Jack- 
son, John Quincy Adams, Samuel L. Southard, Mr. Calhoun, 
Senators Chandler of Me., and D' Wolf of R. I., Gens. Dearborn, 
Scott, Macomb, Bernard, and Jesup — Commodores Bainbridge, 
Tingley, Stewart, Morris, and other officers of distinction. 

The dinner was prepared by M. Joseph Prospere,. a cele- 
brated French cook who came from New York for the purpose, 
and who charged for his services the modest sum of one hun- 
dred dollars. It was the most elegant and elaborate entertain- 
ment ever given in Washington — many of the dishes being 
unique and artistically ornamented in a style never witnessed 
previously in this country. 

In the midst of the dinner, an old soldier of the Revolution, 
arrived at the hotel from the Shenandoah Valley. He was 
eighty years of age and had served under La Fayette. Mr. Poin- 
sett being informed of his arrival descended to the reception 
room and thence escorted him to the dining-hall on the floor 
above and presented him to the Marquis. " General," said the 
veteran — "you do not remember me. I took you off the field 
when wounded in the fight at Brandywine." " Is your name 
John Near," inquired the Marquis. "It is General," replied 
the veteran. Whereupon the Marquis embraced him in the 
French fashion and congratulated him on his healthy condition 



SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON. 121 

and long life. John Near also became the guest of Congress 
and remained at Williamson's a fortnight, feasting to his heart's 
content upon the good cheer provided him and retiring to bed 
every night in a comfortable state of inebriation. When he 
returned to Virginia, La Fayette presented him the munificent 
sum of two thousand dollars, with which he bought a farm 
which is now in the possession of his descendants. 

La Fayette at this dinner gave the following toast : " Perpet- 
ual union among the States — It has saved us in times of dan- 
ger, it will save the world." Mr. Clay gave " Gen. Bolivar the 
.Washington of South America and the Republic of Colombia." 

The first private house in Washington thrown open for the 
reception of visitors on New Year's Day was that of the late 
Mr. Ogle Tayloe on La Fayette Square, in the year 1830. 
Here the members of the diplomatic corps were accustomed to 
present themselves, after their official visit to the President, 
arrayed in their court dresses and accompanied by their Secre~ 
taries and attaches. Many years elapsed before this custom 
became general. In 1849 the visitors at the White House 
proceeded thence to the residence of Mrs. Madison, where 
they were hospitably entertained, Mrs. Madison was by far 
the most popular of all the ladies who have presided at the 
White House. Mr. Ogle Tayloe, in his delightful reminiscences, 
tells us " She never forgot a face or a name — had been very 
handsome — was graceful and gracious and was loved alike by 
rich and poor." Mr. Madison, when a member of Congress, 
boarded in her father's house in Philadelphia where he fell in ' 
love with her, then the widow of Mr. Todd. Mrs. Madison was 
■ ruined by her son Payne Todd, who squandered her estate from 
which she would have realized at least one hundred thousand 
dollars. 

On New Year's- Day, 1828, President John Quincy Adams 
wrote in the album of Mrs. Ogle Tayloe a poem of eleven 
stanzas, and of great merit. He received on New Year's Day 
and, like his predecessors Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, hospi- 
tably entertained his guests. After his retirement from the 



122 SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON. 

Presidency ne resided on the corner of Ninth and Sixteenth 
Streets, where until the close of his life he was accustomed to 
receive the calls from ladies and gentlemen on the 1st of Janu- 
ary. Mr. Adams was stiff and ceremonious in his manners, 
and though by no means popular, was always an object of 
respect to the people of Washington. His wife was eminently 
beloved wherever known. 

Forty years ago it was customary among the ladies of Wash- 
ington to wear for the first time at the New Year's reception at 
the White House, their new winter Bonnets, cloaks, shawls, etc., 
etc. 

General Jackson's receptions, commencing in 1830 and con- 
tinuing till 1837, were marked by a greater infusion of the 
oi polloi than those of his predecessors. He also provided 
refreshments, and in 1836, being the recipient of a prodigious 
cheese from a farmer in Jefferson County, N. Y. ordered it to 
be cut on New Year's Day and distributed in large slices of a 
quarter of a pound weight. Many slices of this cheese were 
trampled under foot on the carpets, and the odor which ascended 
from it was far from savory. 

Mr. Van Buren discontinued the custom of serving refresh- 
ments on New Year's Day at the White House, and it has 
never been revived. 

The Winter of 1852, during the administration of Mr. Fill- 
more, was especially brilliant in Washington. On the 1st of 
January, the reception at the White House was characterized 
by the presence of many distinguished persons from every sec- 
tion of the Union. The agitation of the slavery question 
appeared to have subsided and good-will and fraternity between 
the North and South were once more the order of the day. 

Mr. Fillmore never appeared to better advantage than when 
receiving his friends. His fine person and graceful manner 
rendered him conspicuous in this position. 

His successor, Gen. Pierce, had also the manners of a gen- 
tleman. Mrs. "Pierce was saddened by the death of her son, 
and took little part in the ceremonies of the White House. 



SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON. 12*, 

Mr. Buchanan's New Year's receptions did not differ from 
those of his immediate predecessors. Their great charm was 
the presence of the mistress of his household, Miss Harriet 
Lane, now Mrs. Johnston of Baltimore, a woman of exquisite 
loveliness of person and the most charming manners. Who 
that was ever presented to her can forget the graceful success 
of her courtesy and her radiant smile of welcome ? 

During these later years it has gradually become the custom 
for our private citizens to open their houses on the first day of 
the year, so that the unusual spectacle to a New Yorker of 
ladies in the streets on that holiday, is now seldom witnessed. 
Twenty years ago the streets were filled with carriages on the 
first of January, bearing ladies in full dress and without bonnets , 
to the President's house and the residences of other members 
of the Government. 

In Mr. Madison's time Washington was a straggling village, 
without pavements, street lamps, or other signs of civilization. 
The White House itself was enclosed by a common post and 
rail fence, while all the other reservations were unenclosed and 
destitute of trees or any improvement. Even in Mr. Monroe's 
time carriages were frequently mired on Pennsylvania Avenue 
in rainy weather. In 1810, the population of Washington was 
less than that of Georgetown or Alexandria which then each 
contained eight thousand inhabitants. All those adventurous 
spirits like Law, Morris, Greenleaf, and others who had made 
here large investments in real estate, were ruined. Mr. Bush 
of Philadelphia, writing as late as 1841, said he had long before 
lost all confidence in Washington property. It was not until 
the commencement of the Capitol extension in 1851 that the 
city began to show signs of substantial prosperity and to afford 
an earnest of its subsequent greatness and strength. In all 
the past years of its history no improvements equal to those of 
the year 1872 have been made. At least five hundred elegant 
houses have been erected by private enterprise — to say nothing 
of the miles of pavement and drives, constructed by the District 
Government. A few years more of equal enterprise and 



1 



1T24 SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON. 

Washington will rank among the most beautiful cities on this 
continent. 

Washington changed character almost entirely after the war. 
Northern capital moved in and fine architecture prevailed in 
private buildings. The very form of government was altered, 
and a Board of Public Works took the paving of streets out of 
the hands of the local legislature. 

The appropriations are now greater than they have ever been 
in the history of the city,*— far greater than when the place was 
first pitched here. They amount to about $3, 000, 000 direct 
this year, and nearly $2,000,000 more for public edifices. The 
Capitol edifice itself gets a snubbing, the architect being a shy 
man, who had not learned the art of lobbying and could only 
state the necessity of repairs at least. But the great new 
renaissance -building for the State, War, and Navy Departments 
has received a lift which will cover it with stone-cutters as soon as 
Spring opens ; a new statue of General Thomas is ordered, to 
cost ,$40,000 ; and the Farragut statue is taken out of the 
hands of the artists of the lobby. In two years from this period, 
there will be six colossal statues in the streets of this city, 
five of them equestrian, Washington, Jackson, Scott, Grant, 
Thomas, and Farragut, besides out-of-door statues of Lincoln, 
Scott, and Washington. The old City Hall has passed wholly 
' into the possession of the United States, and with the proceeds 
and a diversion of city funds, a new Hotel de Ville will be 
erected in front of the great new market-house, which has cost 
$300,000. Several new street-railways are authorized, and the 
building-permits applied for or granted show an extraordinary 
advance in construction, much of which is of a villa character 
in the suburbs. In May, the whole line of the , Baltimore & 
Potomac Road will be opened, as well as the new Metropolitan 
Branch of the Baltimore & Ohio. And the Municipal Govern- 
ment has spent $8,300,000 in about eighteen inonths, according 
to its own report, and its opponents say $14,000,000, assessed 
upon nearly .the full valuation of property. 

The enormous aqueduct which runs eighteen miles, through 



THE PUBLIC WORKS. 125 

eleven tunnels and over six bridges, is at last completed and 
connected with the city, at a total cost of about $6,000,000. 
Five bridges of the most durable character, probably good for 
the nest quarter of a century, span Rock Creek. One hundred 
and twenty miles of water-main are now in use in this District, 
of which twelve miles have been raised or lowered to the new 
grades ; and 530 fire-plugs, 255 public hydrants, and many 
drinking-fountains carry off the 31,000,000 gallons used every 
twenty-four hours in this Capital, which is but 20,000,000 less 
than all Paris gets from its government. 

The amount of paving done in the past sixteen months is 
almost incredible in view of the former slow and conservative 
progress of the city. Ninety-three miles of brick and concrete 
sidewalks, and 115 miles of concrete, wood, round-block, grav- 
eled, cobblestone, Macadam, or Belgium block street have been 
laid. Add to this seventy miles of tile-sewer, and eight n ' 
of brick main sewerage through which a buggy can be drivei 
with ease, and the obliteration of the old Tiber Creek and canal 
by one of the largest sewers in the world, in diameter from 20 
to 30 feet, and you will see that old Washington is no more. 
The landmarks have perished from the eye. And the names 
of the streets are also to be changed, — those running from north 
to south to be numbered from First to Sixtieth, instead of First 
street West, Second street East, etc. ; and those running from 
east to west are to be no longer lettered A, B, C, D, etc., but 
named, alphabetically, Adams, Benton, Clay, Douglas, etc., on 
one side, and Anderson, Bainbridge, Chauncey., ] ecatur, etc., 
on the other. 

The Board of Public Works claims that, between 1802-72, 
the Federal Government has spent but $1,321,288 on the streets 
of the Capital, while the municipality spent upon the same 
$13,921,767; adding Georgetown's expenditure, $2,000,000 
more. 




EBBXTT HOUSE AND NEWSPAPER ROW. 



OHAPTEE X. 



JOURNALISM AT WASHINGTON. 

Op which are we representative, who presume to write about 
these legislators and their legislation ? We are representative 
of an institution coeval with modern forms of government ; an 
institution as human as government, as apt to be wrong as 
parties ; more apt to right up promptly and to see the new 
dispensation than parties ; far less sacred than government 
itself, and no longer a mystery except to the ignorant — the 
press ! Under various forms we are all striving, in our 
different ways and according to our several sagacities, or 
want of sagacity, to determine what the people want. If they 
want the little and 'he small, the half-peck measure, the 
microscope view, the sordid, the pensioned, the deferential, 
we have cords of it amongst us ! If they want the substantial, 
the results, the ostensible, the official conclusions, the 
supremely conventional, heie it is ! I n "ght give you in- 
stances of these types, but what is the u le ? Most of you 
illustrate for yourselves. If the atmosphere and stimulus of 
this sort of legislative society are also wanted, the clues, the 

(126) 



JOURNALISM AT WASHINGTON. 127 

missing sequences, the leanings, the entity of separate acts, 
here a little class works for that also. You have only, in your 
vast aggregate of the class of readers, to coalesce with the 
parties which exist, to make your journalism nothing but your 
prejudice : the daily color of the bile which you raise. A 
nervous, absorbing, not lucrative profession is ours. Without 
an intellectual passion in it, it is apt to be degenerating. It 
has its apprentices and its journeymen, its faithful file and 
its acquitted rank. It is no nearer perfection now than 
Congress, the Executive Staff, or the people. But the history 
of journalism as related to our government is curious and 
progressive. The democratic passion has broken in upon its 
former exclusiveness. Instead of being the cats-paw of leaders, 
it is a daily convenience of 'the people. Reader and writer 
are more mutually dependent than formerly, and both regard 
the politician as a kind of middleman, who subsists by shaving 
both. 

Let. us take up the subject of government journalism. 

The first paper started under the Federal Government was 
John Fenno's Grazette.qf the United States, at New York. It 
was indirectly controlled by the Treasury Department, then 
the only department with much pap, and was the organ of 
Hamilton. John Adams was a correspondent for it, under 
the name of " Davilla." To offset this paper, Madison gave 
assistance to Freneau in establishing the National Gazette, and 
Jefferson gave Philip Freneau, who was a college graduate, 
the only disposable office in the State Department, translating 
clerk. 

These papers are collected in the library of Congress, and 
the following is the head of Fenno's prospectus in his first 
number : * 

PLAN 

rr OP THE 

GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES, 
A NATIONAL PAPER, 
To be published at the seat of the Federal Government, and 
to comprise, as fully as possible, the following objects, viz. : 



128 JOURNALISM- AT WASHINGTON. 

1. Early and authentic accounts of the proceedings of 

Congress. 

2. Impartial sketches of the debates of Congress. 

3. Essays on the great subject of government in general, 

and the Federal Legislature in particular. 

4. A series of paragraphs calculated to catch the " living 

manners as they rise," &c, &c, &c. 
Published every Wednesday and Saturday. Three dollars 
per annum, exclusive of postage. Subscriptions will be received 
in all the capital towns upon the continent ; also, at the City 
Coffee House, and at No. 86 William street. 

John Fenno. 
April 15, 1789. 

Freneau, the Madisonian editor, was the abler of the two, and, 
from the beginning, the outside aggressive journalism of the 
country has been .more influential and better sustained than 
the pap-journalism. Freneau finally provoked Hamilton, in 
the third year of Washington's administration, to reply to him 
anonymously, saying truly that to be a government clerk and 
edit a political paper was* " indelicate, unfit, and inconsistent 
with republican purity." Freneau published an affidavit deny- 
ing that Jefferson ever gave a cent, or wrote a line for his 
paper. This was the first newspaper war under the republic ; 
Washington interfered in it. Freneau's . official salary was 
$250 a year ; he modelled and took much of his news from the 
Ley den (Holland) Gazette . Jefferson is said to have always 
affected unconcern in newspapers. Hamilton began public 
life as a newspaper contributor, and he instigated the earliest 
personal journalism under the government. Jefferson, however, 
alleged that Freneau had saved the Republic from being mon- 
archized. Freneau's field was soon competed for by Bache, 
Franklin's grandson, in the Advertiser, afterward the Aurora, 
and the Jeffersonian press wrote compactly and in unison 
over all the country. Then Madison, under the name of 
" Helvidius," attacked Hamilton, who wrote under the name 



JOURNALISM AT WASHINGTON. 129 

of " Pacificus." Washington wrote that the " publications in 
Freneau's and Bache's papers were outrages on decency;" 
nevertheless, Freneau sent him three copies gratis every 
day. 

The administration of Washington closed gloomily, and Dr. 
Michael Leib, afterward Congressman and Senator, wrote in 
the Aurora, the day the President retired to peace, an article 
upon the corruptions of the Administration, that a ship con- 
tractor cudgelled him for. When Adams came in, almost the 
whole press was Jeffersonian, and Freneau and Bache had 
completely exhausted Hamilton with his own favorite weapon, 
the pen. Hamilton was pursued still further ; in 1797, 
Thomas Callendar, a pamphleteer, whose descendants are 
said to be still booksellers in Philadelphia, exposed Hamilton's 
liaison with a Mrs. Reynolds, and many indecent letters were 
published. 

The defeated Hamiltonians patronized William Cobbett and 
his Porcupine's Gazette, the' eighth daily paper published in 
Philadelphia eighty-three years ago, more than in all the 
country. Cobbett was then an English Tory, and he did the 
Federalists more harm than good. He got into collisions with 
Noah Webster, then a New York editor. In 1797 he was put 
under bonds for libelling the Spanish Minister. Matthew 
Carey was also a Jeffersonian editor at that time. Callender 
was always getting on a drunk, and Cobbett was always 
getting into court ; so John Adams' party resolved upon a 
sedition law to break up the anti-Federalist press. By opposi- 
tion the journals thrived and grew steadily bolder. 

The Aurora accomplished the first newspaper " beat," by 
printing Talleyrand's despatches against the partiality of the 
Adams administration before the government got them. This 
led to a deep jealousy against the newspapers, as dangerous 
malcontents and usurpers of government authority. 

In 1798, the " Party," otherwise the administration, and 
the press came to a colossal trial of strength. James Lloyd, 
of Maryland, presented the Sedition Bill, especially aimed at 
9 



130 JOURNALISM . AT WASHINGTON. 

the Aurora newspaper. Hamilton warned the Federalists 
against it ; but it passed. • In essentials, it was the French 
censorship system without warnings. At this time Philadel- 
phia had eight daily papers, New York five, Baltimore two, 
Boston only semi-weeklies. The Minerva in New York, now 
the Commercial Advertiser, was the ablest Federal paper. 

The yellow fever, of 1798, slew Bache, the editor of the 
Aurora ; but James Duane, born on the shores of Lake Cham- 
plain of Irish parents, stepped into the vacant seat. This man 
had established the first English newspaper in the British East 
Indies. He married Bache's widow, and rode forth to slay. 
The yellow fever killed Fenno, also, and his son carried on the 
concern. 

The first victim of the Sedition law was Matthew Lyon, of 
Pennsylvania, sentenced to four weeks' imprisonment and $1,000 
fine. Lyon was elected to Congress forthwith. The papers 
now took each other's part, though without organization, and 
in half a dozen places at once prosecutions began. The Su- 
preme Court was a creature of the Federalists, to silence attacks 
upon the government. Next, Federal militia officers assaulted 
Duane. Duane's lawyer, Cooper, was hounded to jail by the 
implacable Federalists. Chase, the Federal Justice, ^afterward 
impeached, then went to Richmond, Virginia, and prosecuted 
Callender, who was publishing there. Meantime, even Cobbet 
was driven out of Pennsylvania, and his property sold behind 
him. He retired to England, and there began the first com- 
plete report of the parliamentary debates ever published, while 
he also conducted a great political journal, no longer reaction- 
ary, but radical. Thus, parliamentary reporting over the world 
may be said to have been born at the American seat of govern- 
ment. 

Philadelphia, where these inhospitable things had been 
wrought upon the press, experienced a successive intellectual 
decline after the passage of the Sedition law. It has not had 
one great newspaper since the Capital quitted it. No better did 
it fare with the party which passed to conclusions the tyrannical 



JOURNALISM AT WASHINGTON. 131 

Sedition law. The Federal party departed dishonored. Adams 
and Hamilton mutually destroyed each other at last, and the 
spectacle was witnessed of the beaten lights of centralization 
endeavoring to elect Aaron Burr to the Presidency over Thomas 
Jefferson. In 1801, the Sedition law expired. 

The removal of the public offices to the new city of Wash- 
ington, was the signal for two new papers, the National Intelli-. 
gencer, Jeffersonian, edited by Samuel Harrison Smith, of 
Philadelphia, long called by the Federalists, " The National 
Smoothing-plane," and attacked by Duane's more radical- con- 
temporary, as edited by " Silky, Milky Smith." The opposition 
paper was the Washington Federalist, which tumbled to pieces 
as the gall of its faction wore out. 

About the same time the Evening Post appeared for Hamil- 
ton at New York. Callender, then publishing a paper at Rich- 
mond, was refused a Post Office by Jefferson, and he published 
statements of his patron's negro amours until he fortunately fell 
into the James River and was drowned. The Clinton Republi- 
cans of New York now put James Cheetham, an Englishman, 
in the American Citizen paper, and he began to flay Burr. Burr 
forthwith established the Morning Chronicle. In this latter 
fight we hear the first of the Dent family, one of whom took an 
office for his vote against Burr. The end of this triangular con- 
test was the death of Hamilton. He was a gallant, arrogant 
figure, but he had all the military vices. He planned a gov- 
ernment which should appreciate himself, and he threw himself 
to pieces against the greater politician, Jefferson. 

In 1804, Thomas Ritchie established a Jeffersonian journal at 
Richmond, called the Enquirer, the first influential Southern 
paper, " warm, lucid, gossiping," as Hildreth says of it. 

In 1812, the Alexandria (Ya.) Herald committed the first 
breach of privilege in publishing a report of a secret session 
upon a proposed Embargo bill. The editor got off, though he 
refused to give the name of the leaky member. 

In 1812, occurred the Baltimore riots over Alexander Han- 
son's Baltimore Federal Republican, partly stimulated by its 



132 JOUKNALISM AT WASHINGTON. 

rival, the Baltimore Whig. Baltimore was a red-hot war city 
in Madison's time, and the people were tired of the " old Feds," 
who were opposed to everything but the English. However, 
the British got into Washington, and the Intelligencer office was 
torn out by Admiral Cockburn, in person, in 1814. 

The Intelligencer suffered nothing by this accident. It was 
forever a decent and cleanly-clad pensioner upon the United 
States — Jeffersonian till Jackson's time, and then Whig till 
Lincoln's time, when it became rebel Democratic, and went 
into the lobby under Johnny Coyle. It was, in its best days, 
cold-hearted, didactic, rather a " bore," except to a reverent 
man, a sort of Sunday-school journal for grown-up sinners. It 
never fulfilled its business contracts, was always praying for 
relief or subsidy ; was swindled by its business clerks, and it 
did nothing for independent literature. But it had the longest 
existence of any merely national journal. 

This grave old affectation of a newspaper used to say not 
one word for perhaps a week after the issuing of a President's 
message. Then it would appear with a didactic broadside of 
comment, which would be meat for Whig journals all over the 
country. 

When Jackson's new Democratic party drove the friends of 
Monroe and Adams to the wall, he resolved upon a new jour- 
nalist, and a journalistic system as tyrannical and as dynastic 
as his own nature. He sent down to Kentucky for this indi- 
vidual, and fetched up Frank Blair, — not to be the Freneau of 
the period, not the witty and fertile aggressor, but the organizer 
of the newspaper system ; and we probably owe to Frank Blair 
the little that is left of the disposition on the part of party 
organization to cow editors and read newspapers out of the 
party. Blair was one of the worst satraps ever engaged in the 
interest of power against political literature. 

During much of Jackson's administration, the quaint, and 
quaintly named, Duff Green published the Telegraph for Cal- 
houn, against old Frank Blair's G-lobe and Gales' Intelligencer. 
On, or about this time, Reuben M. Whitney, who wrote finan- 



JOURNALISM AT WASHINGTON. 133 

cial articles for the Grlobe, was threatened with death in com- 
mittee-room by Baillie Peyton and Henry A. Wise. They put 
offensive questions to him, and Whitney retorted in kind. 
These honorable members carried loaded pistols and confessed 
to their brutality and cowardice at the bar of the House. Inves- 
tigating committees have little improved in thirty years. Whit- 
ney was afterward John Tyler's Register of the Land Office. 

The Graves and Cilley duel, in 1838, arose from Cilley's charg- 
ing correspondent James Watson Webb with receiving a bribe 
of $52,000 from the bank of the United States. Graves took 
Webb's message and Cilley declined to recognize Webb as a 
gentleman, or " to get into difficulties with public journalists." 
This duel, in reality, was a blood-thirsty Whig conspiracy, in 
which Webb and Wise were equally and disgracefully promi- 
nent. 

Seaton, of the Intelligencer, was Harrison's host and Wash- 
ington city's mayor, when the hard-cider party triumphed. 

Henry Clay was a thin-skinned public man. Old Blair 
punctured his vanity deeply, and Clay revenged himself by 
taking a printing job from him. " I consider the Grlobe a libel, 
and Blair a common libeller," said Clay at the same time in- 
sulting Senator King, of Alabama. He had to make a public 
apology to King, who alleged of Blair that " for kindness of 
heart, humanity, and exemplary deportment, Mr. Blair could 
proudly compare with the Senator from Kentucky." 

Tyler's organ was the Madisonian, edited by Thomas Allen 
and John B. Jones — poor shoats. Jones still lives. He edited 
a paper at Philadelphia, called the Monitor, in 1857, and paid 
the correspondent G-ath the first dollars he ever received for 
writing. This is the best evidence that he was a poor editor. 
In the Madisonian office, John Wentworth and Stephen A. 
Douglas heard and applauded Tyler's resignation in favor of 
Polk, both of them here to represent Illinois for the first time. 

On the 19th of June, 1841, Morse set up the telegraph 
between Washington and Baltimore. The Sun was probably 
the first paper in the country to receive dispatches from the 
Capital. 



134 JOUKNALISM AT WASHINGTON. 

Polk brought out old Blair, and brought Father Ritchie from 
Richmond to edit his new paper, the Union. The vener- 
able Blair forthwith retired from his long autocracy of luxuri- 
ous pensionership ; he had been the most dependent independ- 
ent man who ever reduced public sentiment to a printing job. 
This old " galvanized corpse," as Clay called him, had largely 
ruled the party which ruled the United States for three admin- 
istrations. He used to prepare an article in the Globe office 
and send slips of it to the papers dependent on him for an edi- 
torial policy ; these papers would alter it and publish it ; then 
old Blair would copy back into his own paper these modified 
articles, making a whole broad sheet, and call them " Voice of 
the Democratic press." This tyrannical and gifted old man- 
used to be the political Pope of the party, to read people out 
of it. Some of his successors try to carry the keys, but there 
is no party now-a-days strong enough to afford to lose a news- 
paper. I saw old Blair this day riding into town on horseback, 
with his wife — a stoutish old dame with bunches of luxuriant 
white hair. There were some great elements about those Ken- 
tucky folks. 

It was in February, 1858, that the Honorable William Saw- 
yer, of Wisconsin, took up the New York Tribune, and found 
himself writ down a " critter," who ate sausages behind the 
Speaker's chair and wiped his hands on his bald head. "Then," 
said the article, " he picks his teeth with a jack-knife, and goes 
on the floor to abuse the "Whigs as the British party." 

The article was signed " Persimmon." William E. Robin- 
son, " Richelieu," correspondent of the same paper, endorsed 
it. Sawyer rose to a question of privilege, and drew upon him- 
self the everlasting name of " Sausage Sawyer," while "Riche- 
lieu," expelled, betook himself to the gallery, and thence 
worked down to be a member of Congress. 

In May, 1848, John Nugent, of the New York Herald, got 
an advance copy of Polk's Mexican treaty, a " confidential doc- 
ument " to the Senate. Nugent refused at the bar of the Sen- 
ate to tell who gave it to him, and he was put in jail till the 
end of the session. 



JOUENALISM AT WASHINGTON. 185 

Gamaliel Bailey, with the National Era, in which he pub- 
lished " Uncle Tom's Cabin," was mobbed by a howling pro- 
slavery society, very high-toned, in April, 1848. The occasion 
was some crazy Abolitionists running off seventy-seven negroes 
in a vessel. Peter Force acted as Mayor, to preserve the peace. 
James Clephane, clerk in the Era office, drove the offending 
mariners safely out of town by night four years afterward. 

In 1850, the Southern Press was started in Washington, to 
drive the Northern papers out of the South. It was a dead 
failure. 

In Fillmore's administration some of the correspondents used 
to get into the reception room next door to the Cabinet room, 
and overhear the discussions. Daniel Webster discovered it, 
and had a door interposed. 

In Pierce's time, Forney and the Union newspaper began to 
make a noise. Giddings, of Ohio, wanted the whole set expel- 
led. Frank Pierce was so sensitive about newspaper corre- 
spondents, that he had printers set his message in the White 
House. Giddings used these prophetic words about Forney at 
that time : 

" The editor has read me out of the pale of human society, 
but the day will come when no individual will have that power 
or authority." 

The civil war enormously increased the influence of the 
press. Persons who had previously taken one weekly paper, 
began to take one or more dailies, in order to read the news 
from the front and to follow the career of their sons and neigh- 
bors in the army. About one hundred correspondents were 
kept in the field, and these had to compete with the narrow 
military spirit which resented criticism and frequently sought 
to set the correspondents aside and debar them from informa- 
tion. The correspondents however remained in journalism after 
the war was over when they again encountered the military 
men as politicians and Congressmen. The press had now 
become quite independent of merely partisan patronage and 
openly entered the lists against the corruptions which had sur- 



136 JOURNALISM AT WASHINGTON. 

vived the war. The national campaign of 1872 was inaugur- 
ated by editors, and a journalist was placed in nomination. 
Although the combination was beaten, the press kept the sym- 
pathy of the country, and none of the journals which had un- 
dertaken to chasten public affairs lost in circulation or influ- 
ence. The charges of loose morals, bribery, and collusion with 
railroad capitalists, which had been made during the campaign, 
were clearly proven true by an investigating committee. The 
chairman of this committee, Judge Poland of Vermont, had a 
short time previously exonerated a journalist who had made 
reckless charges on some issue where he was but partly 
informed. Two newspaper men, who obtained a treaty in some 
surreptitious way, were indicted at the bar of the Senate but set 
loose. So formidable had the press become as a purifying in- 
strumentality that one of the Senators, Harlan, joined the pro- 
fession in order to get square with the correspondents. His 
efforts in this direction were chiefly notable for their squeam- 
ishness and absurdity. The newspapers which won most repu- 
tation in the contest with jobbery were the Springfield Hejmb- 
lican, the New York Tribune, -the New York Sun, the New 
York Herald, the Cincinnati Commercial, and the Chicago 
Tribune. 




INSIDE SECTION OF THE DOME«_OF THE CAPITOL, 
WASHINGTON. 







THE CAPITOL, AS SEEN FROM PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE DOME AND EXTENSIONS OF OUR CAPITOL DESCRIBED. 

The Dome of the Capitol, as you know, overhangs the 
middle of the great building, whose name, in any monarchical 
country, would be the "Palace of the Legislative Body," as 
even in this country the White House was originally named 
the President's Palace, and so described by Washington. 

The old Capitol building had three domes upon it ; the 
middle one, standing in the place of the present dome, was 
constructed of wood, and it stood one hundred and forty-two 
feet lower than the present. In 1856, it was removed, and the 
construction of the new dome began, which occupied nine 
years. It is formed almost entirely of cast iron, resting upon 
the old Capitol edifice, which, to support so vast additional 
weight, has been trussed up, buttressed, and strengthened, so 
that it seems to cower beneath the threatening mass of its 
superimposed burden. 

Let us look at this dome. 

Poised over the middle of the long white rectangle of build- 
ings, the great dome "rises in two orders : a drum of iron 

(137) 



138 



THE CAPITOL. 



columns first encircling it, with an open gallery and balustrade 
at the top; then an order of tall, slim windows ; then a great 
series of brackets, holding the plated and ribbed roof, which 
ascends, balloon-fashion, to a gallery, within which is a tall 
lantern, surrounded with columns, like a cupola, and over this 
a bronze figure of Liberty, capped with eagle feathers, holding 




STATUE OF LIBERTY. 



in her right hand a sheathed sword, in her left a wreath and 
shield. She faces east. Her back is to the settled city of the 
Capital. Excepting this figure, which is of a rich bronze 
color, and the dark-glazed windows, the whole dome is white 
as marble. The whole of it, as you see it from the ground, is 
made of cast-iron ; but it harmonizes well in tint with the 
Capitol building, and is of such symmetrical proportions that 
it gives you no impression of excessive weight, 
i It was on the second day of December, 1863, that, at a 
signal gun from Fort Stanton, across the eastern branch, the 
head and shoulders of the genius Of Liberty began to arise 
from the ground. As it slowly ascended the exterior of the 
dome, gun after gun rang out from the successive forts encir- 
cling the city ; when it reached the summit of the lantern, and 
joined its heretofore beheaded body, all the artillery of the 
hills saluted again, and the flags were dipped on every ship 



THE CAPITOL. 139 

and encampment. Majesty and grace are names for it, and 
holding at its cloudy height the boldest conception of Liberty, 
its genius looks calmly into the sunrise, and at night, like a 
directress of the stars, lives among them, as if in the constel- 
lation of her own banner. 

Having ta,ken this observation, let us climb to the rotunda. 
Now look straight up. You are amidst and. beneath a vast 
hollow sphere of iron, weighing 8,009,200 lbs. How much 
is that ? More than four thousand tons ; or about the weight 
of seventy thousand full-grown people ; or about equal to a 
thousand laden coal cars, which, holding four tons apiece, 
would reach two miles and a-half. Directly over your head is 
a figure in bronze, weighing 14,985 lbs. If it should fall 
plumb down, it would mash you as if thirty-seven hogs, 
weighing four hundred pounds a piece, were dropped on your 
head from a height of two hundred and eighty-eight feet. 
This bronze figure is v &ixieeii feet and a-half high, and with its 
pedestal nineteen feet and a-half. Right over your head, 
suspended like a canopy, is a sheet of metal and plaster 
covered with allegorical paintings. This hangs between you 
and the bronze statue of Liberty, and is a hundred and eighty 
feet distant. There are, therefore, one hundred and eight feet 
of the full height of the dome which you cannot' see at all 
within, and in like manner the diameter of the rotunda in 
which you stand is ninety-seven feet, or eleven feet less than 
the exterior diameter of the great dome, far above, and thirty- 
eight feet less than the extreme exterior diameter at the base. 
The old rotunda erected here by Bulfinch was ninety-six feet 
high. 

This dome differs interiorly at present from most others by 
being a mere cylinder, closed with a dome, whereas, nearly all 
famous domes besides are raised upon churches, which are 
cross-shaped, and project a dome from the abutments of the 
hollow cross. In these abutments, high up, statues are com- 
monly set, as in St. Peter's, where the .four angels are placed 
there. No merely civil edifice in the world can boast a dome 
at all approaching these proportions. 



140 THE CAPITOL. 

The pressure of the iron dome upon its piers and pillars is 
13,477 pounds to the square foot. St. Peter's presses nearly 
20,000 pounds more to. the square foot, and St. Genevieve, at 
Paris, 46,000 pounds more. It would require to crush the 
supports of our dome a pressure of 755,280 pounds to the 
square foot. 

The first part of the rotunda, next to the floor, is a series 
of panels, divided from each other by Grecian pilasters, or 
axtoe, which support the first entablature, a bold one, with 
wreaths of olive interwoven in it. 

The decorations of the dome consist of four great basso- 
relievos, over the four exit doors from it, and of eight oil 
paintings, each containing from twenty to a hundred figures, 
life-size. These paintings are set in great panels in the wall, 
under the lower entablature. Four of them are by Colonel 
Trumbull, Aid-de-Camp to Washington, the* " Porte Crayon " 
of the Revolution, and these are altogether the best historical 
paintings which the country has yet produced. The other 
four paintings, with forty years advantage over those of 
Trumbull, are deteriorations. Three of them represent, 
respectively, the marriage of Pocahontas, the landing of 
Columbus, and the discovery of the Mississippi. They are 
poorer than the average of paintings in the gallery of Versailles, 
and scarcely rise above the art of house and sign painting. 
The other picture, Prayer on the Mayflower, has good faces 
in it, and dignity of expression, but it is dull of color, and with- 
out any breadth of light. Trumbull's pictures are conscien- 
tious portraits, the work of thirty years' study ; they are 
without any genius, and timid in grouping ; but accurate, 
appropriate, and invaluable. Congress gave him an order for 
the whole four at once, and wisely. The others ought to be 
taken down when we can get anything better, and sent into 
some of the committee rooms. 

The basso-relievos in the panels, above the paintings, are 
works of two Italians, pupils of Canova, named Causici and 
Capellano, who, like a great many other itinerant Italians, have 
dono work about the Capitol. One or two of them, disgusted 



THE CAPITOL. 141 

with the American taste in art, or stricken with the national 
benzine, jumped into the Potomac, and made their lives more 
romantic than their works. These base reliefs are only of three 
or four figures each, and are copied from curious old engravings, 
cotemporary with the events ; they are not beautiful, but odd, and 
make variety amidst our perennial and distressing newness. 
Between these large reliefs are carved heads of Columbus, 
Raleigh, La Salle, and Cabot. 

These pictures, true 'and disgraceful both to the national 
taste, answer in general the purpose of pleasing people. Learned 
rustics may be seen laboriously criticising them to their sweet- 
hearts. The privilege is also accorded to artists and others of 
exhibiting their models and amateur sketches in the rotunda, 
whereby all sorts of strange prodigies appear, flattering, at 
least, to our democratic charity, but very amusing to foreigners. 

Above this series of relievos and paintings, there is a broad 
frieze, intended to be painted in imitation of basso-relievo^ 
Above this frieze there is another entablature ; these are broken 
up by tall windows on the outer circumference of the walls of ' 
the dome, and at places between the domes can be seen glimpses 
of galleries and stairways ascending between the inner and 
outer walls. At last, the interior concave walls of the dome 
proper made to represent panels of oak foliage, rise in dimin- 
ishing circles to the amphitheatre in the eye of the dome, which 
is sixty feet in diameter, and surrounded with a gallery all of 
iron. Down through the eye of the dome looks the great fresco 
painting of Brumidi, and you can see people the size of toys 
walking directly under this fresco, looking now up, now down. 

It will cost to finish and paint this dome as it should be 
done, not less than $250,000. For the painting in the frieze, 
$20,000 will be required ; to reform the architecture of the 
dome by reducing the number of the entablatures will cost, 
probably, $100,000. To paint the iron panels in imitation of 
oak, as they are cast, will cost $30,000 to $50,000. It was the 
intention to have buried Washington under the floor of the 
rotunda ; this failing, to bury Lincoln there, and to open a 



142 THE CAPITOL. 

large galleried place in the floor, through which the visitor 
could look at the sarcophagus, as is the case with the tomb of 
Napoleon, under the dome of the Hotel des Invalides, in Paris. 
In either case, the families of the dead objected, and with good 
taste ; for a rotunda, used for profane and noisy flirting, hob- 
nobbing, lobbying, and loitering, is no place for a hallowed 
sepulture. Here the statue of "Washington, by Greenough, 
stood, till removed by barbarous enactment, in all its Roman 
nakedness, into the adjacent park. Something of the worthiest 
and most colossal is requisite here — a statue of Public Opinion, 
say, or an allegory of Destiny, or an effigy of Democracy. So, 
around the sides of the dome, there are spaces for statues and 
busts, which ought some day to be filled. 

Situated midway between the two houses of Congress, at the 
middle of the Capitol, and across all the avenues of communica- 
tion, the rotunda under the dome obtains, as it always will 
obtain, an important and picturesque place in the history of 
legislation. There are iron settees around it, where wait for 
appointments of various sorts, people of all qualities and pur- 
suits, some to waylay, some to rest, some to see the infinite 
variety of race or station, or behavior of passing people. Bright 
paintings encircle it, for height and admissible enterprise are 
suggested there ; something curiously instructive, some problem 
to the thought, is everywhere. Danger and power, suppositious 
accident and vivid carnival, fill up the hours. It is one of the 
most curious studies in the world, and destined to be the scene 
of vital conferences, wild collisions, perhaps of solemn ceremo- 
nials, sometimes of happiness, sometimes. of anarchy, sit here, 
under this high concave ; and, while the feet of the perpetual 
passengers fill the void w ith echoes, you may interpret them to 
the coming of the mob, when legislation is too slow for brutal 
party rage, or some unflinching Senator may hear from hence 
the howling of Public Opinion. Here may some brave act the 
best assassination ; here may be promised the price of eminent 
treason. Here may some conquering army, mastering the 
Capitol once more, unfurl their foreign standards, and with 




THE DOME AND SPIRAL STAIR CASE IN CONSERVATORY, 
AT WASHINGTON. 



THE CAPITOL. 143 

their enthusiasm or orchestras celebrate the fall of the Repub- 
lic. So long as the people reign, the Capitol of the United 
States will not be distributed between the wings, but concen- 
tratedeunder the dome. The rotunda is western human nature's 
amphitheatre. Here will stroll the chaotic dictator of Democ- 
racy, with its hundred hands on the wires of the continent. 
Many a fair face will do temptation upon patriotism and public 
duty in the broad sounding area of assignation, typical as it is 
oi the arcana of the earth, where the individual voice but rolls 
into the general echo ; the general echo is sometimes articulate, 
but the highest shout that all can raise stays a little while, and 
expires in stronger silence. The dome, with its hungry, hollow 
belly, is government as you find it, familiar with its gluttonies 
and processes, its dyspepsias and cramps. The outer dome is 
government as the vast mass of citizens behold it — white and 
monumental, and crowned with Liberty. 

How is this vast height lighted, is the next question. Here 
we are in the battery room, which adjoins the dome. The smell 
of the acids, ranged in quadruple circles around the place, in glass 
jars as big as horse-buckets, has no other effect upon the battery- 
tender, he says, than to make him fat. There are here one 
hundred and eighty cells set up and filled with sulphuric acid, 
after the principle of Smee, constituting altogether the strongest 
battery in the world, and which furnishes the power to Mr. 
Gardiner's electro-magnetic apparatus, which lights the lan- 
tern, the dome and the rotunda, touching up thirteen hundred 
gas-burners in a few moments. The whole machinery cost 
about thirty thousand dollars. Of itself, this beautiful and 
almost miraculous apparatus deserves a newspaper "article. 
The power is fifty tons, as if a thunder cloud as heavy as a 
laden canal boat were concentrated on the point of a needle, 
and " fetched " you a dash in the eye. To light up the Capitol 
by this machinery, there is an electro-magnetic engine, with 
connecting wires to all the burners in the building, and to each 
wire a metallic pointer ; the gas is turned on by cranks, answer- 
ing each to a portion of the Capitol ; then the magnetic bolt is 



144 THE CAPITOL. 

darted up tho proper wire ; in thirty seconds the darkness is 
ablaze. This apparatus occupies one of the old wing domes of 
wood, the dome being the battery room, the engine standing next 
door. Thus the old building sends light up to the new one. ; the 
little dome holds fire for the great dome. You should see them 
turn the great dome from perfect night to perfect day. Stand 
under it ! A little moon dazes the far up slits of windows ; the 
concave oye is absolute night ; all the sculptures are lost upon 
the wall ; color and action are gone out of the historic canvases ; 
the stone floor of the rotunda might be some great cathredal's, 
for you can only feel the gliding objects going by, and hear the 
dull, commingling echoes of feet and whispers. 

At a wink the great hollow sphere is aflame. You can see 
the spark-spirit run on tip-toe around the high entablature, 
planting its fire-fly foot on every spear of bronze ; a blaze 
springs up on each ; chasing each other hither and thither, the 
winged torch-bearing fairies on the several levels race down the 
aisles to the remote niches, to lateral halls, to stairways all 
variegated with polished marbles, over illuminated sky-lights 
armorially painted. Your thought does not leap so instantly ; 
and people far off in the city see the lantern at .the feet of the 
statue of Liberty, arise in the sky as if a star had lighted it. 
Since the first commandment of God to the earth, light has had 
no such messenger. It is nearest to will — it vindicates Moses. 

No great building in the world is so lighted, except the 
Academy of Music, and some theatres in New York. But 
thirty thousand dollars is dear even for a miracle. Matches 
are high. 

Standing here, at so lofty an altitude, one is apt to suppose 
that he has reached the king of human peaks.. Not so. St. 
Peter's at Rome, is 432 feet high to the lantern, or 144 feet 
higher than the tip of this airy Liberty. St. Paul's in London, 
is seventy-two feet higher than this. 

And the great Capitol itself, down upon which we are looking, 
covering 652 square feet, more than three and a half acres, is 
one-eighth smaller than St. Peter's Church, and only one-fifth 
larger than St. Paul's. 




VIEW IN THE CONSERVATORY AT WASHINGTON. 
FAN PALMS, ETC. 



THE CAPITOL. 

Yet it is high enough for timid people. The highest part of 
the Capitol building is nearly two hundred feet below us. 

How much money is there in all this Capitol ? What did it 
cost ? Upon the aggregate head, I doubt if the congregated con- 
sciences of all the architects and builders of the Capitol can 
reply, exactly. One gentleman, who has been figuring up at it 
a long time, estimates the cost at $39,000,000. »The lowest esti- 
mate I have heard at all was $15,000,000. But let us see what 
is the architect's statement. The entire cost of the old Capi- 
tol, down to 1827, was less than $1,800,000. St, Peter's 
Church, at Rome, cost $19,i300,000. The new Court House in 
New York, is said to have cost $8,000,000. People have talked 
foolishly about the cost of the public edifices at the seat of 
government. Here are some precise figures, as Mr. Clark gave 
them to me. They do not include the furnishing of the build- 
ings, however : 

Cost of the library apartments, - - • - $ 780,500 
" u u Oil painting by Walker : 

" Storming of Chapultepec," - - 6,000 

Five water closets in the House of Representa- 
tives, ... . 2,178 
Annual repairs, - - - 15,000 
Annual repairs for dome, - - 5,000 
Heating old Capitol (centre), - - 15,000 
Cost of the new wings of the Capitol, - - 6,433,621 
Cost of building the dome, - - *- 1,125,000 
Total cost of construction of all the public 

buildings in Washington City, - 27,715,522 

It is very pleasant to visit the Capitol in the recess. After 
Congress adjourns, we begin to know each other. The carpen- 
ter and the barber go fishing together. The architect of the 
Capitol inquires for your family. The Capitol policemen and 
the officers of the barracks near by stop at your door-step to 
chat with your baby. It is like living in some college town 
during the vacation, and very cool, amiable, and agreeable is 
Capitol Hill in Summer. 
10 



■■' 



.0 THE CAPITOL. 

At Whitney's I saw, a few days ago, a white bearded old 
gentleman, of a Northern and business habit and address. He 
had a brown complexion, a square-ended nose, beveled at the 
tip, and a hearty down-east manner. 

" Don't you know Mr. Fowler, Gath?" said a gentleman near 
by. " This is Mr. Charles Fowler, who built the dome of the 
Capitol." 

Mr. Fowler was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He is, or 
was, a member of the former firm of iron founders, Fowler & 
Beeby, at Read and Centre streets, New York. He was the 
lowest bidder to cast the patterns for the dome, and that noble 
piece of iron work, solitary in the world, was set up by him. 
Perhaps you can best get the spirit of what he had to say in 
the categorial form in which he gave it. 

" What was your contract, Mr. Fowler, when you first under- 
took to build the dome ?" 

" Seven cents a pound for all the iron used. The architect, 
Thomas )$. Walter, made the designs, piece by piece. They 
ran, for example, an inch to eight feet. I was to x -ut up the 
dome, furnishing all the scaffolds, workmen, and so forth, for 
seven cents a pound." 

" Did they keep their bargain ?" 

" No. General Franklin was superintending engineer when 
I first arrived here. He made the contract for the War De- 
partment. After I had run the dome up to the top of the first 
order, or the drum, as you see it there, General Meigs was put 
in Franklin's place. He cut my contract down, arbitrarily, to 
six cents a pound. I consulted my lawyers, and they said : 

' This cutting down of your contract is a piece of force, having 
no authority in law. But if you don't submit to it, you will 
be kept out of your money at ruinous expense. So accept it 
and come back upon the justice 'of the government at another 
time.' 

" Therefore I took the six cents, and the work was stopped. 

"The yard of the Capitol was littered with iron, Senator Foot 
and* others began to ask : 

*' Why is the work on the dome suspended?' 




VIEW IN THE CONSERVATORY AT WASHINGTON. 
BANANAS, ETC. 



WORK ON THE DOME. 147 

"They demanded a recontinuance of the work, and had an 
order made out transferring the work upon the Capitol exten- 
sion from the War to the Interior Department. This was done 
to lift out of Cameron's hands the matter of the dome. 

" I went to the Secretary of the Interior and demanded my 
additional cent a pound. It was paid. I demanded also the fif- 
teen thousand dollars which, under the first arrangement, was 
withheld from my control to-insure the finishing of the dome. 
This was paid over. Then I went to work again." 

" On what principle is that dome set up, Mr. Fowler ?'" 

" On this principle : there is a skeleton series of ribs within : 
they extrude supports for the outer dome : the figure on 'the 
top, the government guaranteed to furnish, as it afterwards did, 
from Clark Mill's designs and castings. The scales on the 
dome are bolted together. There "is no structure in the world 
more enduring than that dome. You may call it eternal, if 
you like. It weighs over 5,000 tons. That is, you tell me, 
only one-ninth the weight of the Victoria tower, on the Parlia- 
ment buildings, in London. Why, sir, the Rocky Mountains 
will budge as quickly as that structure. There are some things 
about it which I don't like, but the Government Superintendent 
is absolute. For example, the first coat of paint should have 
been different. I protested. 'Put it on white,' said the chief. 
Consequently the dome eats up paint by the ton every year, 
because there is not a good color for a base." 

" Does not the dome leak, sir, by reason of the metal plates 
expanding and contracting ? Is it not possible that by the per- 
petual working to and fro of the plates, rust, fractured rivets 
and final collapse will take pla.ee ?" . 

" Why, the whole dome is of one metal : it expands and con- 
tracts like the folding and unfolding of a lily, all moving 
together. An atmospheric change that will move one piece 
moves all — scale and bolt. Rust will happen, but to avoid this 
the building must be kept water-tight and well painted. It is 
not by mechanical changes that public works are affected, but by 
sudden and unnecessary political changes. For example : I got 



148 THE CAPITOL. 

a judgment against the Government in the Court of Claims last 
week for twenty-six thousand dollars. They made a contract 
with me? to put up the wings of the Library, as I had already 
finished and delivered the main part of it. The Secretary of 
the Interior was suddenly changed, and he abolished my con- 
tract whimsically. Therefore, I bring suit, and his little whim 
costs the people twenty-six thousand dollars, besides putting me 
out of pocket even at that. See, also, the effect of a change 
of superintendents, 'which I have already referred to. I have 
a claim of sixty-odd thousand dollars for the increased cost and 
delay incurred by me through the substitution of Meigs for 
Franklin. Had they let me go on by the terms of my contract, 
I should have had the work done by 1861. They stopped me 
arbitrarily ; the war came on ; iron went up some hundred per 
cent ; the river was lined with rebel batteries ; freights went 
up 400 per cent ; the price of labor went up almost as badly. 
A new man's whim will cost sixty thousand dollars, perhaps, 
to the people ; if not, it will come out of my pocket. 

" I tell you, sir," said, the dome-builder, encouraged in his 
theme, " whim, freak, change, are responsible for a good deal 
of folly and more extravagance here. 

" Let me show you how they got a dome in the first place ; 
for that is an example : 

" Mr. Walter, the architect, prepared the plans for a complete 
extension of the Capitol — new wings, new dome, and a new 
marble front for the middle or freestone building, which was 
the old Capitol ; and, as he knew very well that Congress would 
never vote this money in the most economical way, — that is, in 
bulk, or by fixed yearly parcels — he first submitted the wings. 

" Next, as Congress was about adjourning at the end of a 
session, and they were all very merry at night — ladies on the 
floor, everything lively, the dome, splendidly painted, was pre- 
sented in a picture and adopted at once." 



CHAPTEE XII. 



SOME OP THE ORGANIC EVILS IN OUR CONGRESSIONAL 
SYSTEM. 

The present chapter will deal in a discursive way with 
some, of the evils in general legislation. 

With every Congressman comes a little knot of retainers, 
often to his own disgust ; for he has used them and finished,, 
and now they are quick that he shall fulfil his promises. 
Promises are ruin-seeds. Nine-tenths of the crime of the 
state is tied to rash and often needless promises. " Mr. 
Godtalk," says Stirrup the saddler, " I admire your course, 
sir, and want to see you re-elected." 

" Stirrup," says Godtalk, " why don't you get the post- 
office ? It will be a nice little addition to your income, take 
no time from your trade, and be an honor amongst your 
neighbors." 

" Mr. Godtalk, I never aspired to office, sir." 

" Tut ! tut ! Stirrup ; it's easy as asking. If I'm elected 
I'll work for you ! " 

Behold ! the first " uneasy and interested seed is planted in 
the good citizen. ^Ie becomes henceforward a corrupted man, 
the " bore " of his Representative, another hanger-on around 
the Capitol. This loose and almost always needless tendering 
of promises is the mistake of the politician, and the corruption 
of the constituent alike. Every promise, loosely made and 
broken to the hope, returns to plague giver and receiver. We 
have been promising the darkeys in the South — some of us — a 

ri49) 



150 ORGANIC EVILS IN 

mule and a forty-acre farm. Let us look out that the mule 
doesn't kick us dead, and the forty-acre farm be our political 
cemetery. Promise nothing out of the contract of principles. 
Come to Washington with free hands, and the highway to 
honor, if it has enemies before, will have no assassins behind ' 
No sooner had the members of Congress begun to arrive, than 
the poor promise-bearers followed after. They looked mean, 
as does every man with an immortal soul, who waits for a favor 
that he does not deserve. The saddler's fingers were nervous. 
The citizen's direct look of searchingness, and yet confidence, 
had a sycophantish, sidewise smile in the bottom of it. The 
man was clinging by his eyelids to a politician's word of 
honor, and God help the hold on that support ! The constit- 
uent had already begun to feel revengeful, for his suspicious 
fears, born of his conscious meanness, had begun to reproach 
his Representative. Both were disgusted. The politician had 
dishonored the saddler's hearth with a foolish promise, and 
made a family malcontent, and traitors to obedient, cheerful 
citizenship. 

There is no time when one sees these personal errors so 
vividly in their effect upon the State, as at the opening of 
Congress. The power of the State, as an attraction and an 
evil, when it enters into competition with the private patrons 
of the people, is at this time very manifest. You live, per- 
haps, down in Egypt, or on the Illinois Central Road, and get 
the paper afar .off, and in your heart you honor the State. 
The news, as it comes from Washington, is vague and great 
to you. The names of senators are resonant names, which 
you hold in excellent respect. The Government is the mighty 
protector of you and yours, a sworded .benefactor, a most 
impartial father, and yet almost your son. 

When this Government, by one of its officers — legislator or 
what not — comes down from its misty remoteness of sun and 
thunder cloud, like Jupiter to Danae, and singles one of you 
out for its caresses, tho pure worship you have paid it turns to 
personal lust and jealousy. Therefore, the fewer possessions 



OUR CONGRESSIONAL SYSTEM. 151 

that the Government holds, the better for it and you. With 
its clear, attenuated brow and naked buckler, it is our common 
champion ; but with armsfull of public lands, bon-bons of 
railway subsidies, Christmas gifts of Indian contracts and 
sinecures, and the whim and capacity to make invidious 
favoritisms, Government entering the market place is the 
wickedest debaucher of the people. 

A man came to me recently. " You know a good many 
people in Congress," he said ; " I've got a little business I 
want to see you about after awhile. I'm here in behalf of the 
Snuffbox tribe of Indians ! " 

" What do the Snuffboxes want ? " 

" Oh ! they're despret anxious to get that treaty o' theirh 
fixed ; want to sell their land, you know, being hard-up and 
desirous of agoing South. It's all just and fair as the Golding 
Rule.. This yer Osage expozay spiled the treaty of the Snuff- 
boxes. But, as I said before, ourn is clar and just as the 
Golding Rule." 

Not being a street preacher, I replied only in generalities 
to this gentleman ; but in this correspondence may make it 
plain to 3 r ou that by the very situation of the Government we 
have been unjust to the Snuffbox Indians and this corrupt 
lobbyist together. This was evidently an intention to cozen 
the Snuffboxes out of three or four millions of *rich acres ; but 
why was this man, apparently a good citizen (he had been a 
soldier) in the job ? 

Because Government was in the market as patron and 
employer. The citizen found a short cut to wealth by making 
a treaty, and quitted his honest livelihood to come to Wash- 
ington and make marketable the plausibilities of Congressmen. 
Here he saw a way to spend a year of dishonorable feeling, 
" smelling," and huckstering for the sake of a lifetime of 
wealth. We must make an honest man of him by putting 
Governments out of the market, abolishing the Indian title in 
lands, and setting the entire government real estate on an 
equal footing, so that you, John Smith, Tom Walker, and the 



152 OEGANIC EVILS IN 

devil may be made equal as purchasers, so far as nature finds 
you. 

The mere value of a residence here is esteemed as so much 
money-right, because you may board with a Senator, lend a 
horse to a Sergeant-at-Arms, or know a doorkeeper well, and 
this involves the possible right to demand a favor of the Fede- 
ral State. 

" Do you want five thousand dollars down in a check ?" said 
a man to another once in my hearing. " Here it is. I want 
somebody in the Senate to propose to take up the bill making 
seven Judge Advocates. I don't want you to see it pass, 
because there are seven of us who have fixed all that. It's 
bound to pass ! We only want some one Senator to lift it up. 
Whom do you know?" 

This was in the last hours of the session. Suppose you lived 
here, and had entertained Senator Enoch, of Hindoocush, with 
a soft crab lunch ; what more easy than to slip up to the" door- 
keeper, say, " Take this card to Enoch," see Enoch come 
benevolent through the door, say " Senator, my nephew depends 
on this bill being raised ; vote as you please, only move to lift 
it ; did you enjoy those crabs ?" And, presto, there is $5,000 
down merely for knowing one man. 

So large is the power of the Federal Congress becoming, 
that to be a doorkeeper, messenger, even a page, is to possess 
a chance to obtain offices, privileges, and appropriations. I 
used to see a dull-eyed man in one of the galleries — a door- 
keeper. One day there was a huge overthrow of officials, and 
into a post of great trust this doorkeeper walked. From being 
a servant, he became an officer of Congress, and in his present 
place knows matters so valuable, that the regular Secretary of 
the Senate cannot know them. The choice may have been a 
superb one, but I instance it only to show the advantage of 
having the right of acquaintanceship with Congress. Clerk- 
ships in the House and Senate, are worth fortunes to some 
people. Here in the Clerkship of Claims, Mr. Corbin grew 
wealthy, and yet he never had a vote ; but the knowledge of 



OUR CONGRESSIONAL SYSTEM. 153 

what was going on, and the right to salute honorable members 
familiarly, and to say a good familiar word for some one's 
claim — this was his royal road. 

Few persons are aware how Congress conducts business, and 
one might go to the chambers and read the Grlobe every day for 
two years, without growing a great deal wiser. Yet it is by 
the defects of the organization of Congress that thievery thrives 
— defects inseparable from all human contrivances. 

The commercial republic whose soul and courage be not in 
sentiment, but in necessity, is open to this criticism, that, while 
it has money to spend to keep the empire together, it does not 
like to risk its blood for the same purpose. 

A Mr. Shannon, of California, who was a member of Congress 
during the war, said to me the other day : 

" This Congress, and every other that I have seen, is cursed 
by demagogues. I can understand a scoundrel, and meet him ; 
but a demagogue is an insidious being, who works with treach- 
ery upon the instability of periods and localities, and defeats 
good legislation, by making somewhere a prejudice. During 
the war, when we had been defeated on the Rappahannock, and 
everything was going to pieces, Congress sat here in session, 
debating how to make a new army. It was proposed, in this 
emergency, to have a conscription, and make every man, if 
necessary, come out to defend his country ; but when this bill 
passed, what did that demagoguing Congress do, though it sat 
within a day's march of the enemy ? Why, they *set about 
passing a commutation bill, which was, in fact, nothing but a 
bill to raise revenue. The United States had a right to every 
man in it to go to the front if he was needed and take his chances, 
but that miserable set of demagogues sat there wrangling as to 
whether the draft policy could not be evaded by the payment of 
some money." 

In this you can see how the commercial republic prefers to 
sacrifice but one thing, and that is cash. In peace it will buy 
justice, and in war it prefers to buy the nation back, rather than 
to fight for it. Here is one of the greatest evils at the Capital, 



154 ORGANIC EVILS IN 

not that corrupt legislators hot from the stews ot caucus, will 
take money for their vote, but that commercial men of high 
gharacter, will pay the money in order to save time. When a 
set*of interests in New York want a bill essential to their sol- 
vency ? —a bill perfectly proper in itself to pass Congress, they 
employ a lawyer and send him on here, with authority to draw 
money it it be needful ; and'he generally gets but one instruc- 
tion, and that is to cany the bill, and, " if these fellows begin 
to tinker about it, just pay them." It is the country people of 
the United States who are still its mainstay — the large class 
who have not been debuached by great profits, and whose devo- 
tion to the State is as strong as the family tie itself. If we can 
stop demagoguing among the poor people, and corruption 
amongst the enterprising, we shall have solved the main prob- 
lem ; and our reserve forces, which are rapidly gaining strength, 
— such as intelligence amongst the masses, the dissipation of 
old illusions — such as the assumption that the plundering of the 
many is business — and the drafting of good men into politics 
by a sort of social enforcement — these are our reliances to save 
the State. 

Here, before me, as I write, is the Captain's chart, the 
manual for the Speaker of the House of Representatives. It 
consists of 500 odd pages, and superbly bound, and is a piece 
of government work, pronounced by Colfax to be the best 
parliamentary manual in the English language. 

The contents of this book are : 1. The Constitution, and 
amendments, of the United States — so well indexed that the 
Speaker can catch any phrase of it in a couple of winks. 2. 
Thomas Jefferson's manual of parliamentary practice, which, 
by law of 1837, governs " in all applicable cases." 3. The 
standing rules and orders of business in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, 161 in number. 4. Joint rules and orders of the 
house, 22 in number. 5. Standing rules, in the Senate, 53 in 
number. 6. The whole of the foregoing digested or made 
compendious and perspicuous by John M. Barclay, Journal 
Clerk, of the House of Representatives. The digest alone, 



OUR CONGRESSIONAL SYSTEM. lOO 

making 212 large pages. Herein you have the traditional and 
self-imposed laws of the National Legislature in the popular 
branch, and he who shall study this book well, can be advised 
of the most economical, expeditious, and impartial way of 
carrying on the federal legislation of the Republic. A very 
few members, however, have studied the manual: some have 
never looked into ; and a large proportion of those who know 
it best, have mastered it for the purpose of taking advantage of it. 

Young men and boys have a good deal to do with legislation. 

Willie Todd, Speaker Colfax's messenger. Of him I took 
occasion to inquire into the person and history of Thaddy Mor- 
ris, who had been page to Speaker Pennington in 1859, and 
virtual Speaker of the House of Representatives. Mr. Pen- 
nington was a delightful old gentleman, ignorant of parliamen- 
tary practice, and he was elected by a compromise between the 
adherents of Sherman and Marshall, of Kentucky. Placed in 
his embarrassing chair, he found the great dog-pit of the House 
barking, like Cerberus, under him, and he took every ruling, 
point, and suggestion from Thaddeus, most gratefully. 

Once, it is related, when young Morris had prepared every- 
thing snugly for Pennington, outlined the order of business, 
prompted him completely, and left the course " straight as the 
crow flies," so that a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not go 
astray, he said to the Speaker : " Now, go on." 

" Now, go on ! " cried Pennington,- promptly, to the House ; 
at which there was huge laughter. 

It was an inspiring thing to see that delicate boy, secreted 
in the pinnacle o°f the nation, like Paul Revere 's friend in the 
old South Church spire, supplying knowledge to the gray- 
beard who had the honor without the skill of governing. 
There is many a boy, unseen, at the elbows of statesmen — 
little fellows of downy chins — whose heads are as long as a 
sum at compound interest. 

This is the Senate-house, a room all gold and buff, a belt of 
buff gallery running round it ; through the gold of the roof 
twenty-one great enameled windows giving light. The floor 
hereof is a soft red English carpet ; deep golden cornices sur- 



156 ORGANIC EVILS IN 

round the hall ; a blue-faced clock without a sound goes on 
with time remorselessly. So blackly the people fill all these 
galleries that it is but here and there a sunbeam falls upon a 
face, making it warm yellow ; the far-ceiling corners of this 
hall are full of darkness ; dark also are the deep-gilt ornament- 
ations in the edge of the ceiling ; upon the floor, however, 
where the chief actors stand, it is clear as open day. 

The scenes witnessed in the night sessions are a good deal 
like the physical manifestations to which you are used in old 
cross-road churches at what is called " revival time." People 
speaking against time to exhausted auditors, each auditor, 
however, getting up steam for his particular turn at exhorta- 
tion or prayer. The Speaker, whose attention and nervous 
readiness must be kept up to a high pitch, sits far up in his 
seat, behind the marble desks of the clerks, gavel in hand, 
like a man on a wagon-box, keeping in rein two hundred 
horses at once, and these horses — " fractious," or poorly 
broken — duck, break up, rear, neigh, or pull the wrong way, 
or lazily, while his gavel is flourished like a whip-handle 
without a lash. The disposition to draw blood, and the inca- 
pacity to do it, are very clearly expressed in his face, and 
therefore he brings the House to by a loud " Whoa ! " Then 
he straightens them up with a cautious " Peddy — peddy — 
whoa ! G'lang now ! " Directly some stallion bounces off 
into a ditch, and the Speaker's " Gee, there, Mike ! " or 
" Haw ! haw ! Tommy ! " with dreadful indications of the 
broken whip-handle, coerce the team into some degree of good 
behavior. 

In the cloak-room, some groups of Congressmen are smoking. 
Here and there on the floor of the House you see some one 
surreptitiously pulling at his cigar. Every lobbyist, who by 
hook or crook can get upon the floor, is traveling about 
between seats and sofas, with a sly, sidewise look, an express- 
train tongue, and a vigorous movement of his hand, gesturing 
on his private interest. Here is a member helping out some 
such lobbyist, introducing him round, pulling a group of folks 



OUR CONGRESSIONAL SYSTEM. 157 

into the wash-room or side-lobby, all talking, hearing, suggest- 
ing, flying round like folks wrought up to the verge of despair. 
In the open space before the Speaker a score of anxious people 
assemble, ready to seize the Speaker's eye and gouge some 
proposition through it. Now vindictiveness is most alert to 
beat some hated rival or adverse interest in the dying hours 
of the session, as it has 'succeeded so well in doing during the 
bulk of the season. You can make intense studies wherever 
you look, as ot two such hating and hated enemies watching 
each other. Here is Bellerophon, the member from Pasca- 
goula, resolved to get. his friend Shiftless, of the contested 
seat, through in the nick of time, for Shiftless has scarcely 
money enough to embark on the train for his home, and he 
hopes, by a decisive vote, to save all his back pay, settle his 
board bills, and have some spending money. 

Bellerophon is on the floor, in the area, working his faith- 
fullest. He cries, " Mr. Speaker," in and out of time, feels 
his skin abraded by repeated failures, and the color, pale or 
red, rises alternately to his cheeks, while poor Shiftless stands 
off in pleading silence, saying short pieces of prayer between 
his need and his hypocrisy, like a man in a steamboat when 
there is inevitably to be a scuttling. Some distance off, Strike, 
the unappeasable enemy of Shiftless, lurks, with the light of 
revenge in his eyeball, and the phrase "I object!" upon his 
tongue, balanced like a man's revolver at full-cock. So they 
fignt it out. So they stand arrayed — the old immemorial 
history ol friendship, enmity, and hero, celebrated since litera- 
ture could venture to portray anything. The morning hours 
advance ; nature gives out, and all doze or sleep but these 
three, and many similar trios like them. At last even interest 
subsides, and he whose rights are being guarded, feels himself 
satiety, listlessness, inattention. He sleeps at his desk, while 
vigilant Friendship, keeping guard in the area with weary 
legs, cries steadily in all the pauses : 

" Mr. Speaker, I believe I have the floor ! " 

" Mr. Speaker, you recognized me, I am sure,, sir ! " 



158 ORGANIC EVILS IN 

Still Malice, with unsmoothable eyes, is ready with his 
cocked revolver, saying ever : 

" I object ! " 

Even Friendship wearies in the end, and stopping in some 
empty perch to rest, feels the leaden weights upon its eyeballs, 
drive them slowly down. But when the interested one and 
Ins champion are quite overcome, still tireless and remorseless 
the Enemy looks out, bright and prepared, with the uncom- 
promising — " I object ! " 

Knowing, as I did, the undertone of motive at the Capitol, 
I watched the last hours of the session on a Saturday with 
something of the sentiment of Lord Macaulay when he contem- 
plated the Tower of London : 

" They are associated with whatever is darkest in human 
nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of 
implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the 
cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness 
and blighted fame." 

The same must be said of the latter days of the Senate, in 
executive session here, when enemies fall afoul of each other 
and slaughter each other's hopes of place between- the decisive 
instants of triumph. It is the old, old story of Raleigh, 
Essex, and Sidney. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE CHEERFUL PATRIOT IN WASHINGTON AND WHAT HE SAID. 

The Cheerful Patriot arrived in Washington on a bright morn- 
ing of 1868, that he seemed to have brought with him. His 
face was extremely amiable. Stepping from the depot, he 
looked round about him benignantly, evidently on the eve of 
bowing to anybody who would give him a chance. 

" How did you enjoy your ride from the Western Reserve ?" 
said I. 

" My dear boy ! it surpassed all that I had read of our pro- 
gress. We have truly a wonderful country. Is that Willard's 
over yonder ?" 

He pointed with his stick to the yellow- gable of Dyer's Hotel, 
where some brakemen and conductors were basking. 

" No ! Willard's is as big as forty of that !" 

" Bless my soul ! The progress of the people is wonderful. 
Did I ever tell you that story of the first hotel they built in 
Ashtabuley ? Well, lead me along ; I'll tell you all about it." 

1 enjoyed the Cheerful Patriot's anecdote very much, though 
I did not hear a word of it. He wore an ancient white hat, 
and a black cloth suit. Neither moustache nor bearded chin 
had he, but genuine whiskers of a healthy gray. 

" Is that the City Hall ?" he said. " Why, it's big enough 
for Solomon's Temple. The monument there looks like one of 
the seven candlesticks. Mr. Lincoln was a noble man ! That 
Mr. Booth was truly a wild young person. But, then, we 
musn't judge each other." 

"Here, Mr. Chase lives." 

" Dear me ! I voted for him way back in the fifties. I was 
never sorry for it. If it wishes him no harm, I am glad that 

(1G0) 



THE CHEERFUL PATRIOT. 161 

he lost the nomination this time, for I should hate to have voted 
against him. In pint of fact," said the Cheerful Patriot, " I 
should like to have two votes : one of 'em I would give on 
election day, the other I would give after election, to soften the 
disappointment of the losing man. I'd give Mr. Seymour a 
vote a few days after this election — say a hundred years or two !" 

To the Patent Office the Cheerful Patriot put on his specta- 
cles and said that it was vast, even considering the number of 
patent? medicines we had. The General Post-Office, he said 
with all reverence, was the Thirteenth Apostle. 

" In my day," he alleged, " I sent a valentine to my wife, 
that was afterward, and by the lightning mail coach, she 
received it the following Fourth of July. Perhaps she wouldn't 
have had any more pleasure had it come earlier. There's com- 
pensation for all things." 

At Willard's I apologized to the Cheerful Patriot, that there 
was no elevator. He said to Mr. Chadwick that an elevator 
might be a curiosity, but .the grandeur of the establishment 
made its loss unnoticeable to any sturdy pair of legs. He was 
given a closet room on the fifth floor, for the clerk said, sotto 
voce, that he'd be derned if any man had any right to be so 
well satisfied at Willard's. 

Said the clerk : " Nobody wan't ever quite satisfied here, and 
the Cheerful Patriot shan't be no exception !" 

Said I to the Cheerful Patriot: " They allege in all the Wash- 
ington hotels that it's better to keep a bad hotel than a good 
one. All being equally ill-kept, there is no choice, and nobody 
ever changes from one to the other, because it will be to dis- 
cover different evils from those we are used to." 

" My dear boy," replied the C. P., " all this is a vast improve- 
ment upon Washington, as I knew it forty years ago. Then 
we came by stage from Baltimore, paying three dollars hard 
cash, where we ride now in an hour or more, for twelve York 
shillings currency. The hotels were provincial, like those of 
all the country. The beef was all taken apparently from one 
inexhaustible ox, and the bread was made of corn meal, on all 
11 



162 THE CHEERFUL PATRIOT. 

but rare occasions. The servants were slaves and slow; the 
cooking utensils admitted of little haste ; there were few facili- 
ties for expediting the food to the table. Go back to the con- 
trivances of that time, from this gilded dining room to the white- 
washed walls, from smoking rolls to yellow pone, from free 
waiters to slaves ! Be compensated in knowing that if this 
landlord does not do as well as he might, he at any rate pays 
his servants wages." 

I look around me and I think I " see politer manners, less 
deference perhaps, or less assumption, but more equal claims, 
more equally accorded. The faces of the people show better 
digestion, better food, less coarseness that used to pass for 
individualism. 

" They drink, Cheerful Patriot ! There is a great marble 
bar here ; across the way is a nest of hungry gamblers, who 
watch the stranger and the dignitary, alike." 

" These evils are sad," said the Cheerful Patriot, " but we 
\?ere not rid of them in our days. Then the grosser liquors 
were set upon the private tables, and men talked in the heat of 
them. We elected Presidents by hard cider. Apple brandy, 
the parent of drunkenness, affected the head of the wisest. 
Whiskey was as patent, but the drink of Statesmen was raw 
brandy, a combative and violent liquor, that was the challenger 
and slayer in one-half the cases on the field at Bladensburg. 
Gambling is a low and concealed craft, to-day. It used to be 
part of hospitality here, and host plundered guest, and guest 
felt the injury. Then, indeed, women shared in it, taking cue 
from court-life abroad, and sO aggravated their weaknesses with 
avarice and despair. My dear boy ! many of us old men say 
better things of those days than we know, because they were 
our youth. Believe Cheerful Patriot when he tells you, that 
the. new days are the best for the new men !" 

" But the chaste Commandment is broken here, among the 
oftenest. Between the Avenue and the Smithsonian, on much 
of the ' Island,' in all localities, base and high, there are vile 
places shut up from daylight. It is not doubted that in some 
of the departments, stained women hide," 



THE CHEERFUL PATRIOT. 163 

" Sadder! sadder still !''.' said the Cheerful Patriot," but even 
to this sorrow there is hope ! I remember in the days of slavery, 
that the planter came to Congress with his slave concubine and 
there was no scandal, because there was no law. The husband 
and father, Hamilton, closest friend of Washington, confessed 
that he had become a woman's victim to the extent of embar- 
rassing his public accounts. Of Jefferson some men spoke no- 
better ; the times were lax ; Virginia made the sentiment ; New 
England made only the religion. A government clerk entrap- 
ped into a duel the brother of one he made a castaway, and the 
loss of his office was his only punishment. A woman's disputed 
fame turned out a cabinet. For Vice-President we had no bet- 
ter than Aaron Burr, whose path was strewn with young vic- 
tims. In those days, as now, I was a Cheerful Patriot, seeing 
how more excellent were pur public morals than those of any 
court in Christendom. I see woman still erring and man 
depraved, but the Capital is better. With these sad social ques- 
tions even legislation is busy. Oh, no, my dear boy : in this 
pint there is no improvement !" 

Here the Cheerful Patriot shook hands with the porter who 
handed him his hat, and asked if he could see the President's 
house. 

" Bless my soul !" he said, " is that the United States' Treas- 
ury ? It's an apocalypse in granite ! Monoliths, are they, the 
pillars ? They're strong for one stone, sure. This is a great 
country. The Treasury building is our Sans souci. Frederick 
the Great built his palace of that name to show the people how 
much money he had after the war. We build this to show how 
much debt we have. It indicates it splendidly, and the White 
House is truly the Palace Beautiful. I am glad to see the Pres- 
ident with a good roof over his head ! Takes ten thousand dol- 
lars a year to repair it ! Well, that's not three per cent of the 
cost. See how figures come down when they are explained ! 
You think the city sprawling, half built over, never to be fin- 
ished ? Why, it has arisen like a Phoenix since my last visit. 
They were twenty-five years buildingafche old Capitol ; the new 






164 THE CHEERFUL PATRIOT. 

wings were finished in a very few. There's not a big church 
in Europe that three generations of men didn't work upon. If 
we expect to finish this nation, Capital and all, in eighty years, 
we shall leave nothing for our own boys to do. How much of 
a town was Paris eighty years after they begun it ? The storks 
flew over Rome for the first century, unable to see it. The 
Washington monument is abandoned ! Yes ! but he'll grow in 
fame with every posterity. If we've done our work well, and 
it will only stand, somebody will come up to resume and finish 
it! " 

Here we reach the Yan Ness Mausoleum on H street. 

" See this !" I said, " this cool old nook of private sepulture. 
Observe its venerable form and high grass that grows around 
it. Within sleeps one of the former mayors of this city, Gen- 
eral Yan Ness. He was a man of the old time ; people speak 
reverently of him yet. Our fussy Wallachs and money-grub- 
bing Bowens are very different !" 

" Be just to the living as well as the dead," said the Cheer- 
ful Patriot ; " all memories mellow by age. I knew General 
Yan Ness well. He was a New York city politician and came 
here as a Congressman when the city was a slough, the Capitol 
a scaffold, and the White House an ague-bed. The members 
fled to Georgetown to find board and lodging. They went in 
hacks or on horseback across the muddy landscape to sit in the 
unfinished Capitol, their sessions beguiled by the thud of trowel 
and hammer. At night they pined for company, and for want 
of it they drank, gambled, and did worse. Cock-fighting was 
common among the most eminent. It was an amusement of 
Washington itself. Prize-fighting of the spontaneous, rough- 
and-tumble sort, accompanied with the gouging out of eyes and 
the biting off of ears, was frequent ; men were executed and 
statesmen looked on at the foot of Capitol Hill. At that time 
an ignorant, obstinate, canny Scotch farmer named Davy Burns 
lived in a farmhouse down by the fogs of the river. The loca- 
tion of the Capital City upon his grounds made him rich. To 
his crude shanty, young Congressmen pressed at night courting 



THE CHEERFUL PATRIOT. 165 

for the heiress, and Van Ness, having the New York " dash," 
carried off Miss Marcia Burns. In your time this would be 
called a shoddy-wedding, turf-hunting, what-not. Shoddy and 
silk wear the same hue fifty years off. The Scotch girl made a 
good wife ; the politician settled on his lands and rose to be 
mayor. One of his wife's cousins died in the poor-house, neg- 
lected. Now the family is extinct and the heiress to half the 
site of Washington lies under this fantastic mausoleum. If 
you had seen, as I have, the wild partisanship of General Van 
Ness for General Jackson, you would have ascertained that the 
race of politicians had somewhat improved. Justice to them 
all, my dear boy, good in their day, but the breed is bettering !" 

" Cheerful Patriot !" I said, " see the despicable contest 
between the co-ordinate departments of our government ! Re- 
view the Impeachment Trial ! Consider that with the Presi- 
dent of the United States one third of the public officers have 
broken social intercourse ! Had you such discourtesy in old 
days?" 

The Cheerful Patriot looked a little pained and said that I 
was looking too closely into the coal-hole of the ship. " You 
see the firemen and the sailors fighting," he said, " and lose 
heart in the steamer ! Come on deck among the people. Why, 
my dear boy, I have seen the Vice-President of the United 
States preside over the Senate with the blood of the Secretary 
of the Treasury on his hands ! I have seen the Vice-President, 
though of the same party, upon no terms of communication 
with the President. Andrew Jackson sat in Congress and 
refused to vote the thanks of that body to President Washing- 
ton. Jefferson, in danger of being cheated out of the chief 
magistracy by Burr, prepared the Governors of two states to 
march with militia upon Washington. Jackson's retainers 
waylaid Congressmen as they quitted their chamber and left 
them for dead. The passions of individuals break out, but pat- 
riotism goes on." 

" ! too Cheerful Patriot ! " I said again, " there are two 
recent crimes new to our country and novel to your experience : 
Assassination ! Rebellion ! " 



166 THE CHEERFUL PATRIOT. 

The Cheerful Patriot bent his white hat, and walked a long 
way, saying nothing. 

" The great God has crooked ways for all great races," he 
said, " our only statesman whom murder ever aimed at was the 
best, and therefore the infamy of his taking off will find no 
future aspirants. In the shudder of all human kind the last 
of our braves perished with the first. 

And rebellion was only an essential passage in the life of 
slavery, the ante-climax, where the terror is rolled up against 
the State to make the great finale glad with freedom. Lincoln 
was murdered when the first slave came ! No, my dear boy ! 
let us be cheerful patriots! The death of Lincoln lay back in 
the decrees of the insatiable demon of Slavery. What hope 
is there not for the land that could tear a tumor like this from 
its loins and live ! Even for the rebel South there is hope. As 
Cheerful Patriots we must not cease to hope for the most re- 
morseless. Firm to be merciful, distributing sympathy between 
our wayward elder brother and the new-born heir of freedom 
he has scourged, let us go forward cheerfully, proud of the 
present, confident of the future." 

The Cheerful Patriot ascended the dome of the Capitol, won- 
dering at every step, declaiming of the great country, and as 
he burst upon the panorama from the upper cupola, he shut his 
eyes with pious joy : " Move the Capitol ! " he said, " it won't be 
the Cheerful Patriots that will do it these hundred years. If 
Richmond can outlive defeat and Washington expire with vic- 
tory, how much will glory be quoted at by the square foot ? 
My dear boy," he said, "this site is fine as Rome. It has 
already outlived almost as many perils. It has sheltered more 
virtuous rulers. It will ever be visited reverently whether we 
depopulate it or not. Looking down upon it as do we, follow- 
ing the solemn circle of those far bastioned hills, exploring the 
grey highway of its forked river, seeing it momentarily expand 
and flourish, and feeling the memories that possess it as well 
as the commemorations to come, what American will not ht 
a grave and also a Cheerful Patriot. 



CHAPTER XIY. 



TALK WITH THE OLDEST CITIZEN OF WASHINGTON — REMINIS- 
CENCES OF THREE-QUARTERS OF A CENTURY. 

To talk with a man 89 years ot age, who has passed all his 
life on one spot, and has a good memory for all the incidents 
respecting it, is in itself instructive. If your acquaintance 
should chance to have passed all his life on the site of the 
Capital City, and is able to recollect distinctly events between 
1797 and 1873, you will converse with him with perhaps great- 
er satisfaction than with the oldest denizen of any other town 
in America, because his experience will span the entire person- 
al life of the nation. 

There are in Washington several old men who recollect Gen. 
Washington. One of them is Noble Hurdle, of Georgetown, 
living at No. 176 High street, who is said to be 96 years old, 
and to have a grand-child past 40. Another, Christian Hines, 
I went to see a few days ago, who was 89 years of age, and was 
an object of curiosity for relic-hunters and people who wish to 
ask questions on old sites and points of interest. At the age 
of 82, he published at his own expense, a pamphlet of 96 pages, 
entitled " Early Recollections of Washington City ; " but he 
was in very straitened circumstances, and the little book was 
not remunerative, so that much which he might have commit- 
ted to print was allowed to go to waste. He had a clear ap- 
prehension, however, that, in his remarkable old age and keen 
memory, Providence had left him some dignity worth living for, 
in being of use to the future historians of the city. This con- 
sciousness lightened up his face, and seemed to give increased 
tenacity to his memory, for he would sometimes make nights 
of reminiscence, impelled by the strong desire of giving help 

167 



168 EEMINISCENCES. 

to literary folks, by which results were obtained as satisfactory 
to himself as to his hearers. 

A visit. One blustering Sunday I sought the old man's ten- 
ement, on Twentieth street, between H street and Pennsylva- 
nia avenue. It was the last piece of property which he retained 
out of a large portion ol the block which had belonged to his 
family, and here he had attended to an old furniture and junk- 
store as long as he was able to get about, but had finally been 
driven by rheumatism and increasing infirmities to the upper- 
story, where he resided in a lonely way with his neice, who was 
very deaf, and who shared the solitude and gave him some 
little help. The lower portion of the store was filled with 
everything quaint under the sun, and the loft where the old 
man lived consisted of three rooms without carpets or plaster, 
two of which were forward of a partition which divided the 
loft crosswise, and in one of these forward rooms Mr. Hines 
slept, and in the other had his frugal meal cooked. He lived 
almost wholly upon his pension of a few dollars a quarter, 
received from the Government for his services in the War of 
1812, which he entered as a private, and became a Lieutenant 
at the time of the Battle of Bladensburg, in which he was 
engaged. In the same company appeared the names of the 
Bealls, Millers, Milburns, Shepherds, Goldsboroughs, and 
many other families well known in Washington. 

Christian Hines was a fine-looking old man, and, old as he 
was, there was another brother, aged 93, resident in Washing- 
ton, who, he said, was in much better health and memory than 
himself. This brother lived on Eleventh street near S. There 
were thirteen children in the family, whose common father had 
been an emigrant from Germany to Pennsylvania, and, by his 
partial knowledge of the English language, was recommended 
to an emigrant Captain as a proper person to procure a vessel 
load of people to come out of Maryland. With these emigrants, 
the elder Hines settled in Montgomery County, Md., about 
thirty years before the Revolution. He was, therefore, in 
Montgomery County when Braddock's army marched through 
it from Georgetown to Frederick. Christian Hines was brought 
up in Georgetown,, which he describes as " pretty much of a 



REMINISCENCES. 169 

mud-hole" before the Capitol was built on the other side of 
Rock Creek. 

His first recollection is that of going to see the President's 
House, which was then just rising above the basement story. 
He recollects that some cakes were bought for the children at 
a bake-house kept in a small frame building, which relied for ' 
custom upon the laborers who were building the White House. ' 

At fourteen years of age he was put in a clothing store, 
which a Georgetown merchant established at Greenleaf's 
Point, and of this episode he gives a very complete account. 
He passed but one house from Georgetown and the President's, 
except two well-known blocks called the Six and Seven Build- 
ings. The road led by F street to Eleventh, and thence across 
to the Island. There was not a single house on the Avenue 
from the President's to the Capitol. Many acres of elegant 
forest trees bordered the Avenue, on what is now the prome- 
nade side. An insecure crossway crossed Tiber Creek, with 
berries growing in the marsh close to the bridge ; and the old 
man remembered the sweetness of those berries more than 
any of the prospects which might have been supposed to touch 
his imagination in the Government town. Across the bridge 
he plunged into the woods, and then, emerging, he saw that 
a vast plain of old fields extended to the river, with a few of 
the fruit trees of old farms standing up at places in it ; and 
there were no houses in all the view, except some speculative 
edifices called the " Twenty Buildings," an old mansion, and 
some farmers' shanties, already condemned. 

Settling- the town. The store being a failure, young Hines 
went to school, next door to the house of the Rev. Stephen 
Balch, in Georgetown, until 1798. At this time, business got 
to be relatively brisk in Washington, and many strangers 
moved in. Some settled at the Navy Yard, a few about the 
Capitol, but the most about the Treasury Office, and along F 
street, beyond the Treasury, as far as St. Patrick's Church. 
The 'F street neighborhood got the most settlers, and to anti- 
cipate the removal of the Government from Philadelphia, Mr r 



170 CHRISTIAN HINES. 

Hines' father, and his intimate friends in Georgetown, held a 
meeting ' and selected a spot for their future residences in 
Washington. They then removed from their large two-story 
log-house and frame attachment, and squatted near the 
Observatory. They had difficulties in getting water, as there 
were but few pumps. A part of the family began to work 
cutting timber in the white-oak slashes on the higher grounds 
of Washington, to build the Navy Yard wharf. The roads 
were wretched, and the boys had to haul the chips from the 
spot where the timber was cut to their distant house. Mr. 
Hines remembers with perfect distinctness the vessels dis- 
charging furniture, &c, for the Government edifices, at Lear's 
wharf on Tiber Greek ; and carts were so scarce that his 
father's was impressed to remove boxes of books, papers, &c. 
He remembers that many of the boxes were marked " Joseph 
Nourse, Register." At this time, Mr. Hines remembers the 
north wing of the Capitol just rising out of the ground, and 
the President's House half a story high, and the only place 
between, with anything like the appearance of a village, was 
middle F street. 

Where the General Post Office stands, there' were a few 
laborers' shanties huddled around a great hulk of a hotel, 
called Bloclgett's. There was no street opened across the 
city. Where Washington's statue now stands, at " The 
Circle," was the place for cock-fights and scrub races, where 
the laborers working on the public buildings used to have 
shillelah fights with the idlers of Georgetown. At the election 
between Jefferson and Adams, held at Suter's Tavern, George- 
town, there was a good deal of fighting and disputing in the 
rain and mud, and Lieutenant Peter, son of Robert Peter, who 
was a lieutenant in the regular army, and a connection of 
Washington, set one of his men to fighting with a Georgetown 
rough, by which the wounded soldier was made blind by the 
other man smearing his eyes with mud, and Mr. Hines 
remembers him led about the streets of Georgetown by a boy 
for years. 



SEES THE CITY SETTLED. 171 

There were no druggists' stores in the city, and but few 
groceries, and a coarse country fair was kept up on the present 
Smithsonian grounds. The first tavern in the city was Betz's, 
in an old two-story frame between Thirteenth and Fourteenth 
streets, with a swinging black Horse sign. After this came 
Ehodes', Queen's, Davidson's, and Tunnecliff's, the first of 
which was at the corner of F and Fifteenth, the next two on 
the Avenue, and Tunnecliff's on Capitol Hill. Mr. Hines saw 
General Washington twice, — the last time in 1798, when he 
crossed the Potomac from the Virginia shore on a ferry-boat, 
near the present Aqueduct bridge, and walked down Water 
street, Georgetown, through rows of citizens uncovered like 
himself. He bowed to them as he passed on. The George- 
town College boys were all formed in a line, in uniforms of 
blue coats and red waistcoats. Washington was escorted by 
the volunteers of Georgetown, and as he crossed Rock Creek 
bridge, to enter the house of his nephew, Thomas Peter, the 
volunteers fired complimentary volleys. At another time, Mr. 
Hines remembers Washington coming up the Potomac in a 
sail-boat, and disembarking in Rock Creek, where there were 
semi-circular steps leading up the bank to Peter's house, 
where he made his home in the city, and which is still stand- 
ing. Mr. Hines remembers John Adams in a line of men 
aiding to pass buckets of water to and fro from the burning of 
the first Treasury Building. He remembers Jefferson, as if 
it were yesterday, riding his horse through the city, wearing 
his hat down over his eyes, and with a blue-cloth double- 
breasted coat with gilded buttons. During Jefferson's first 
term, a freshet in the Potomac, and a sudden torrent of rain, 
which lasted a whole day, so raised the Tiber Creek that it 
flooded Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol gate to Sixth 
street, and made a river on the south side of the Avenue. 
Laborers on the Capitol building, wishing to get to their 
homes, attempted to wade this torrent, and were carried off 
their feet and floated down the stream, where they caught in 
the bushes and branches of trees, and held on perilously 



172 REMINISCENCES. 

through the whole night. Mr. Jefferson rode down to the spot 
on horseback, and offered $15 a head for each man saved, and 
the use of his horse to anybody who would make the venture 
to rescue them. 

Mr. Hines remembers Mr. Madison, with his hair powdered 
on all occasions, walking up F street, when Secretary of State, 
from his residence to the White House, where he kept his 
office. He remembers Mr. Monroe walking from the western 
part of the city to the White House, while Secretary of State, 
limping a little, and with his left side always foremost. He 
remembers the General Post Office when it was kept in the 
War Office building, along .with the Patent Office, and has 
seen Mr. Gideon Granger enter his boarding-house in the 
" Seven Buildings." 

In 1858, Christian Hines, and his brother, Matthew Hines, 
took advantage of the latter's confinement to his house to jot 
down together, from their united memories, all the early 
houses and families in the Capital. Matthew Hines died in 
1863, and his brother, with pious industry, recorded their 
reminiscences. 

The first roadway made on the Avenue was by cutting 
down the bushes and briers with scythes, and carting gravel, 
chips of freestone, and refuse from the new buildings to make 
a footway. The footways were made first, and the middle of 
the street filled and levelled afterward, until the whole 
resembled one of the army-roads made in Virginia during the 
War. Four rows of trees were planted down the Avenue in 
1801, and Mr. Jefferson was frequently there, looking at an 
old man named Buntin setting out the Lombardy poplars. 
Jefferson was fond of going to the spot where all the improve- 
ments were made, and his poplar trees lasted for very many 
years ; but it was rumored that they would not procreate, 
being female trees only. He remembers the forest trees 
growing in beautiful clusters on the site of Welcker's 
restaurant, and has passed through noble virgin groves in 
various parts of the city. 



THE CITY A MARSH. 173 

The Tiber Creek, now almost entirely filled in, was then a 
large sheet of water, clear and deep, great sycamore trees 
extending their roots beneath the banks ; and he has seen 
scows, laden with marble and limestone, towed up the creek 
and fastened to the roots. Wild ducks would settle where the 
Centre Market now stands, so close to the shore that people 
used to throw stones at them ; and he has seen flat-bottomed 
boats, at high tide, towed across part of the President's 
grounds ; and at such times, David Burns' farm and house 
lay off like an island in the deluge. Mr. Hines does not 
clearly recollect that he ever saw Davy Burns, the owner of 
the farm on which the most important part of Washington 
was laid out. He is satisfied, however, from hearing people 
talk about Burns' former condition, that he had been poor, 
and, like the majority of the people of the region, was fond of 
ardent spirits, and often took too much. •> His jug had been 
known to come with much regularity to Georgetown to be 
filled with whiskey, and this fact led to much unneighborly 
comment when, after some years, the farmer's fine daughter, 
Marcia, rode over to the burgh to have her dresses fitted. 
Burns' farm extended from the present Yan Ness mansion to 
the Mausoleum, where he was afterwards buried (on H street, 
near Ninth), and thence to the Centre Market, on the Tiber. 
It therefore included the site of the new State Department, 
Winder's. Building, the Corcoran Art Gallery, the White 
House, the Treasury, the most valuable lands afterward built 
over by Corcoran and others, the Centre Market-house, 
Willard's Hotel, and the most valuable parts of the Avenue. 

Mr. Hines remembers the execution of McGirk, a wife 
murderer, at the foot of Capitol Hill, early in Jefferson's 
Administration; and he attended the first play ever acted in 
the city, where Joseph Jefferson and Junius Brutus Booth 
acquired much of their art. The play was given in the shell 
of Blodgett's unfinished hotel, — that Blodgett who had pro- 
posed to Jefferson to habilitate a whole street with houses, — 
on the Post Office Hill, in 1802. Hines and the boys sucked 



174 REMINISCENCES. 

their way into the hotel by getting into the basement, and 
removing loose boards from the floor. 

I asked the old gentleman to tell me how the stone from 
Acquia Creek was raised up Capitol Hill. He said that it 
was taken as far up the Tiber Creek in scows as possible, and 
then run up a sort of platform railway, — the hoisting done 
from the summit. 

The Potomac channel was formerly on the Virginia side of 
Mason's Island, and on that side an emigrant vessel direct 
from Europe landed passengers in the early days, many of 
whom gave respectable families to Washington. Mr. Hines 
keeps in his room the portraits of Lorenzo and Peggy Dow, 
whom he knew very well, and saw Lorenzo's grave many a 
time, in Holmead's burying-ground, at Twentieth and Boundary 
streets, the bodies from which were removed within my own 
memory. He has .heard Lorenzo preach in the old Hall of 
Representatives, many Congressmen listening. Mr. Hines 
remembers ten old and now extinct grave-yards on the site 
of Washington, — one of which (Pearce's) covered a part of 
Lafayette Square, and was an attachment of an apple-orchard. 
Pearce ,was a saddler at Georgetown, and a teacher beyond 
the Eastern Branch. Where his old farm-house and orchard 
stood, the finest part of Washington is now established. 
Jenkins' farm adjoined the Patent Office site. Funk's prop- 
erty — the house built of small imported Holland brick — 
covered Observatory Hill. 

Mr. Hines listened at Decatur's window, with other persons, 
in 1819, and heard the low, dying groans of that gallant 
sailor. " With the poor people of Washington," he said, 
" Decatur was not as popular as with the rich ; yet there was 
a certain austerity about him. He would fight duels, but he 
was brave enough without that." 

Mr. Hines family bought a farm from Dr. Thornton, the 
architect of the Capitol, and had to forfeit it for want of funds 
to make the final payments. The farm stood out near the 
foot of Meridian Hill. He also invested, with 'his brother, 



THE PRESIDENT LOSES HIS CLOTHES. 175 

$900 in the Potomac Canal Company, and lost it, and dug a 
spadeful of earth at the Little Falls, with the spade John 
Quincy Adams had just used. He remembers Adams going 
into swim, as he was wont, near the present Monument 
grounds ; and there is a tradition that the President once had 
his garments stolen while swimming, and was compelled to 
get to the Executive Mansion in a somewhat undignified state 
of nudeness. 

He remembers when General James Wilkinson had his 
headquarters on the Observatory Hill, and also the arrival of 
the first steamboat at the city wharves, the stages running to 
Fredericktown, as they do no longer, and the maintenance of 
a regular sail-ferry over the Potomac at Georgetown. The 
old gentleman showed me a beautiful etching of John 
Randolph, who had bought a lot and put up a house on the 
Hines property, — which house burned down afterward — and 
stated that a lady had made the picture by improving the 
opportunity of Randolph's daily trip along the Avenue. He 
is represented with long, bony legs and thighs, and shallow 
chest — a mere skeleton — and riding a splendid-blooded animal, 
whose sleekness is in strong contrast to Ms meagerness. 
Randolph's cap is pulled down over his eyes, like a student's 
green patch ; but he rides like a natural Virginia hunter. 

Such were some of the recollections of this feeble, stalwart 
old man, who sat before me, with a high black cravat, veins 
large, and feebly moving in the hands and throat ; gray but 
abundant hair, and gray whiskers of a healthy hue. He looked 
poor, but not in need — poor chiefly in days, which he counted 
without apprehension, saying, " The Almighty means to send 
for me very soon now." 



CHAPTEE XY. 



STYLE, EXTRAVAGANCE, AND MATRIMONY AT THE SEAT OP 
GOVERNMENT. 

Dining in Washington is a great element in politics. The 
lobby man dines the Representative ; the Representative dines 
the Senator ; the Senator dines the charming widow, and the 
charming widow dines her coming man. For reed birds the 
politician consults Hancock, on the avenue ; for oysters, Har- 
vey ; and for an ice or a quiet supper, Wormly or Page ; but 
there is no dinner like Welcker's. He possesses an autograph 
letter from Charles Dickens, saying that he kept the best res- 
taurant in the world. He has given all the expensive and 
remarkable dinners here for several years ; and talking over 
the subject of his art with him a few days ago, we obtained 
some notions about food and cooking at Washington. 

Welcker is said to be a Bel- 
gian, but he has resided in 
New York since boyhood, and 
he made his appearance in 
Washington at the beginning 
of the, war as steward of the 
seventh regiment. He is a 
youthful, florid, stoutish man, 
with a hearty address, a ready 
blush, and a love for the open 
air and children. Every Sum- 
mer he goes down the Poto- 
mac, shutting his place behind him, and there he fishes and 
shoots off the entire warm season, wearing an old straw hat 

176 




JNO. WELCKER. 



RESTAURANT PRICES. 177 

and a coat with only one flap on the tail. Nobody suspects 
that this apparition of Mr. Winkle is the great caterer for the 
Congressional stomach. Nobody imagines that this rustic is 
the person whose sauces can please even Mr. Sam. Ward, that 
distinguished observer for the house of Baring Brothers. No- 
body knows— not even the innocent and festive shad — that 
this Welcker is John Welcker, who came to Washington dur- 
ing our civil broil, drew and quartered for Provost Marshal 
Fry, fed all the war ministers, and gave that historic period 
the agreeable flavor of Mushrooms. 

In the early days of Washington, entertainments other than 
family ones were given at the taverns, some of which, as Beale's, 
stood on Capitol Hill. Afterward Mrs. Wetherill, on Carroll 
Row, set especial dinners, breakfasts, and suppers to order. In 
later times Crutchett on Sixth street, Gautier on the Avenue, 
and Thompson on C street, established restaurants a la carte. 
Gautier sold out to Welcker, who had such success during the 
war that he bought a large brick dwelling on Fifteenth street, 
near the Treasury, and at times he has leased several surround- 
ing dwellings, so that he kept a hotel in fact, though without 
the name. Welcker has a large dining room, eighty feet long- 
by sixteen feet wide, with adjustable screens, adapting it to 
several small parties, or by their removal to make one large 
dining room, which will -seat one hundred people. Welcker's 
main lot is one hundred and thirty-three by twenty-five feet. 

The character of Welcker's entertainments is eminently 
select, and his prices approach those of the English Castle and 
Falcon, or of Philippe's in Paris. His breakfasts and dinners 
a la carte are about at New York rates, less than those of the 
Fourteenth Street Delmonico, and matching the St. James and 
Hoffman restaurant prices. The most expensive dinners he 
has ever given have cost $20 a plate. Fine dinners cost from 
$10 to $12 per plate, and breakfast from $5 to $8 per plate. 
He has fed between six and seven hundred people per diem, as 
on the day of Grant's inauguration. His best rooms rent at 
$8 a day, and consist of a suite of three rooms, but the habit- 
12 



178 STYLE AND EXTRAVAGANCE. 

ants thereof pay the establishment for food, wine, &c, not less 
than $50 a day. 

Welcker's chief cook is an Italian Swiss, obtained from Mar- 
tini's, New York, — the same who distinguished himself at 
Charles Knapp's great entertainment in 1865, the cost of which 
was $15,000. Welcker supplied the food for Mr. Knapp's last 
entertainment, in 1867, at the I St. mansion, now occupied by 
Sir Edward Thornton. There are five cooks in all at Welcker's, 
and the establishment employs thirty servants. During the 
past session he has given at least two dinner parties' a day, 
averaging twelve guests at each, and each costing upwards of 
$100. 

The best fish in the waters of Washington is the Spanish 
mackerel, which ascends the Potomac as high as Wicomico 
river. They come as late as August, and bring even five dol- 
lars a pair when quite fresh. 

, Brook trout, propagated artificially, Welcker thinks lack 
flavor. . He obtains his from Brooklyn, but says that there are 
trout in the Virginia streams of the Blue Ridge. 

Freezing-boxes, or freezing-houses, such as are established in 
Fulton Market, New York, do not exist in Washington. These 
keep fish solid and pure for the entire season. The inventor of 
them is a Newfoundland man, and he proposes to put them up 
in Washington for $300 a piece. 

Welcker says that the articles in which the District of Co- 
lumbia excels all other places are celery, asparagus, and lettuce. 
The potatoes and carrots hereabouts he does not esteem. The 
beef is inferior to the Virginia mutton, which he thinks is the 
best in the world — better than the English Southdown. Poto- 
mac snipe and canvas-back ducks Welcker thinks the best in 
the world, and the oysters of Tangier, York river, and Eliza- 
beth river he considers unexcelled by anyin the world. The 
Virginia partridge and the pheasant, — which are the same as 
the northern quail and the partridge, — Welcker also holds to be 
of the most delicious description. 

Our markets, he says, are dearer than those of New York 



VARIOUS PRICES. 179 

and Baltimore, and less variously and fully stocked. The mar- 
ket system here requires organization, being carried on by a 
multitude of small operators who are too uninformed about 
prices to institute a competitive system, and hence it often hap- 
pens that potatoes are sold at one place for $1.50 a bushel, and 
somewhere near by for only fifty cents a bushel. His market 
bill will average during the session, $600 a week, and some- 
times rises to $300 a day. 

The most expensive fisheries on the Potomac rent for about 
$6,000 a year. Messrs. Knight & Gibson, who have the Long 
Bridge fishery, opposite Washington, paying $2,000 a year for 
it, pay also $6,000 for a fishery near Matthias Point, about 
seventy miles down the Potomac. Knight & Gibson keep a 
fish stand in the Center market. 

The first shad which reach the North come from Savannah, 
and bring in the month of February -as much as $6 a pair. 
Alexandria is the chief mart for saving and salting shad. 
Gangs are often brought from Baltimore, Frederick, and Phila- 
delphia to man the shad boats, and five miles of seine are fre- 
quently played out. The black bass in the Potomac river were 
put in at Cumberland several years ago, and have propagated 
with astonishing fecundity. How much nobler was the exper- 
iment of this benefactor of our rivers than the wide spread 
appetite for destructiveness we see everywhere manifested. 

The most expensive dish furnished by Welcker is Philadel- 
phia capon au sauce Goddard, stuffed with truffles, named for 
the celebrated surgeon Goddard of Philadelphia. The best 
capons come from New Jersey, but good ones are raised in the 
region of Frederick, Md. The capon is probably the most 
delicious of domestic fowls, attaining the size of the turkey, but 
possessing the delicate flesh and flavor of the chicken. Truf- 
fles cost eight dollars a quart can, and four dollars and a-half the 
pint can. They come from France and North Italy, and grow 
on the roots of certain trees. Truffle dogs and boars are 
used to discover them, and the boars wear wire muzzles to 
keep them from eating the precious parasites. Truffles look 



180 STYLE AND EXTRAVAGANCE. 

like small potatoes, except that they are jet black through and 
through. The capon is boiled and served with "white-wine 
sauce and with sweet breads. 

Take next for an example the prices which we receive in the 
Arlington, which is a small hotel, with a capacity for no more 
than three hundred and twenty-five persons. 

Senator Cameron paid for himself and wife $450 per month, 
and had but two rooms. Senator Fenton had a parlor, two 
bedrooms, and an office, and paid $1,000 per month. Mr. S. 
S. Cox and wife, paid $250 per week, and he gave a buffet 
supper, for one hundred persons,, which cost him $1,500. Mr. 
W. S. Huntington, gave the Japanese the finest spread ever set 
in the Arlington Hotel ; there were only twenty persons, and 
he paid $1,000. Dr. Helmbold paid $96 per day, and his bill . 
for two weeks was about $1,600. A parlor, and three bed- 
rooms in the second story of the Arlington, with a small family 
occupying them, are worth $450 per week 5 during the season ; 
and one guest here pays for a parlor, bedroom, and bathroom, 
$300 per month. 

At the Delevan House, Albany, Dr. Gautier used to pay $375 
per week, and General Darling, with a parlor, three bedrooms, 
and four persons, paid $400. The hotel at Lake George, had 
37,000 on the register last season, in four months ; it took, in 
that space of time $294,000, and the net profits were $52,000. 

The Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, rents for $200,000 a 
year, including the stores beneath it. The St. Nicholas rents 
for $95,000, although it cost but $425,000. Mr. A. T. Stewart 
has just rented to William M. Tweed, the Metropolitan Hotel, 
New York, for $85,000 a year, to put his .son, Richard Tweed, 
into business as a landlord ; and the Lelands, who go out, paid 
$75,000. 

The cheapest piece of hotel property, in point of rent, in this 
country, is the Brevoort House, New York, which rents for 
$27,500, and has three owners ; it is kept on the European 
plan, excepting the table d J Jiote, which it does not keep up, as 
it has made its reputation on the best cuisine in the world. . 



BALL TO PRINCE ARTHUR. 181 

One evening in 1870 the Capitol of the nation did itself credit, 
by heartily welcoming one of the young sons of the Queen of 
England. The opportunity was a ball given by the • British 
Minister, Thornton, to Prince Arthur, probably with the origi- 
nal motive of making his visit agreeable to the young man, by 
showing him the pretty girls in their most becoming dresses, 
and giving him a convenient chance to speak to them, as a 
young man likes to speak to a fine girl, intimately, and agreea- 
bly. Nothing has ever been invented like a dance, to bring the 
young folks together. The story of Cinderella's slipper turns, 
upon going to the Prince's ball; and I suppose that, so long as. 
human nature remains what it always has been, Princes' balls 
will be popular, and Princes the type of all that is noble and 
exalted. Jones is called the prince of caterers, and Simon 
the prince of sleeping-car conductors, and if the term be a 
compliment when it has no reality in it, how really infatuating 
must be a true Prince, born of the Queen, peer above the 
highest, with jealous mysteries of blood, and a birthright which 
will keep respect and inspire superstition, long after its wearer 
is broken down in character, and ruined in purse. The most 
decided Republican and Democrat, though he may sneer at 
Princes and deprecate attention to them, is apt to feel the 
strange magnetism of the name and the office*, for it is an 
admonition of antique times and government, a word of spell, 
signifying to the ear at least, the issue of those whose love and 
nuptials affected a realm, a period, or a world. This Prince is 
still a Prince, though not a powerful one — a far-off son, with 
elder brothers between him and a throne, — and perhaps he has 
had reason to feel the distance at which he stands from favor ; 
therefore, it was gentle in us, who had treated his high-born 
brother with such opulence of incense and favor, to be no colder 
towards young Arthur. His father and mother were exception- 
ally chaste, as affectionate as wife and man in two sensual and 
selfish lives could be. His mother wrote with her hand, a letter 
of sympathy to the widow of our most precious President. The 
office of Prince in our day is reduced to such small political 



182 STYLE AND EXTRAVAGANCE. 

figure, that we could do no harm to monarchy, by showing 
republican bad manners to this young gentleman. And we owe 
it to our high place amongst nations to do cheerful hospitality 
to any Prince or ruler, well-behaved, who comes amongst us 
with frank confidence in our good will and good breeding. 

I write this down, because it is always easy and tempting to 
sneer at Princes ; and when this young man came to the Capi- 
tal, I had an itching to say something that would make you 
laugh about him. There is really no reason, however, for any 
disparagement, because the good sense of our guest and our 
people, has been displayed during his visit. If any low fellow 
has said anything coarse in his presence, I have not heard of it. 
He has been subjected to a round of official dinners and recep- 
tions, which I would not have passed through for a hundred 
dollars a day, and he has kept himself patient and obliging all 
the time. More than that, he is a young man, and can't help 
being a Prince. S.o good luck to him ! 

Mrs. Thornton, like the first walking lady in a comedy, 
gathered up her moire antique dress with the satin trail, close 
to the blue satin panier, and surrounded with Apollos of lega- 
tion, each looking like a silver-enamelled angel out of a valen- 
tine, accomplished the descent of the stairs, treading all the 
way upon scarlet drugget, and helped by the laurel-entwined 
balusters. 

At the foot was the Prince, dressed in the uniform of the 
British Rifles, — dark sack coat, double-breasted, buttoned to 
the throat, and well trimmed and frogged along the lappels ; 
tight, dark-colored pantaloons, with a stripe, strapped over 
patent leather boots ; a steel-sheathed dress sword, at his side ; 
an infantry cap in his hand ; a little cartridge box, like a 
tourist's glass, strapped across his shoulder ; and What shone 
and flashed like a streak of day-light through him, was a huge 
jewelled star, the insignia of the Garter. This latter, perhaps 
the symbol of the highest nobility in Christendom, was more 
observed than the clear skinned, rosy face of the young man, 
his brown hair, good teeth, and obedient and intelligent eye. 



STYLE AND EXTRAVAGANCE. 183 

His clothes clung almost as closely to him as his skin, and while 
he was one of the most plainly-dressed persons conspicuous 
upon the floor, this fact alone made him somewhat eminent. 
There was that, besides, which gave him beauty and character 
beyond the star that threw a hundred sheets of light every way 
he turned ; the fine distinction of ruddy youthfulness, made 
modest and interesting by being placed in such prominence. 
If a young man knows how to feel publicity, and yet bear him- 
self well under it, so that there is a nice mingling of self-reliance, 
and sensitiveness, the effect upon a crowd is to get him hearty 
sympathy — the next thing to admiration. 

Arthur gave Mrs. Thornton his arm, and escorted her to 
the ball room. The Cupids out of the valentines, the Prince's 
followers, and all the rest of the little suite and embassy joined 
in behind, making quite a spangled procession, as if the gas 
fixtures were going to a party in company with the window 
curtains. As they all came along together, gold ramrod and 
satin drapery, the band in the gallery struck up, " God save 
the Queen !" Then the people sitting in cane chairs on both 
sides of the long hall stood up, and ceased waving their fans. 
The shoe blacks and darkeys in the street below, looked up at 
the flaming windows, and said interjections, and danced steps 
of involuntary jigs, and said out of their malicious little spirits : 
"Shoo Fly." ' . 

Arthur, with Mrs. Thornton still on his arm, walked the whole 
length" of the hall to the carpeted platform, when he turned 
about, and waited modestly till the music ceased. Then he 
shook hands with many folks standing round, whom he remem- 
bered, or thought he did. Elphinstone, his aid, was covered 
all over with medals of daring, gained probably, by such victo- 
ries as this, and he wore the gorgeous uniform of his red- 
complexioned nation. Picard, another aid, wore the English 
artillery uniform. They looked well, as Englishmen look — a 
sort of stiffened-up suggestion of manhood, with indications of 
skye terrier fringing out. 

One of the romances of Washington city was recently enacted 



184 STYLE AND EXTRAVAGANCES. 

in the Diplomatic Corps. For nearly thirty years Baron Gerolt 
served the interests of Prussia at Washington city, and he lived 
long enough to rear native-born American children under the 
shadow of the Capitol, one of whom married Mr. Rangabe, the 
Greek minister. Gerolt owed his appointment to this country, 
to Baron Humboldt, who had been entertained by him while 
charge in Mexico, and who recommended him to the King 
of Prussia. Gerolt was an affable, republican sort of man in 
society, fond of the American people, and his social associates 
were men like Charles Sumner and others, who inclined him 
towards the Federal side in the war of the rebellion. He prob- 
ably got considerable credit for original principle during the 
war, when he was really subordinate to acquaintances ot a 
stronger will, who impressed the claims of the North upon him. 
It is charged that, at home, he was ' somewhat tyrannical with 
his family, as is the German custom : and that he and his wife 
wished to assert too much authority over their children, who 
had inhaled the breath of the "Western hemisphere. Whatever 
the interior side of his life might have been, Gerolt is remem- 
bered enthusiastically by some of the best people in Washing- 
ton, Republicans and Democrats alike. He resides at Linz, 
near Bonn, in Rhenish Prussia, and is permanently out of the 
diplomatic service of North Germany. 

The Gerolts, although Germans, are Catholics, and the girls 
were strictly brought up under the tuition of the priests at 
Georgetown. Bertha, the youngest daughter of the Baron, now 
about twenty-three years of age, and a very rich and handsome 
type of the young German girl, fell in love, three or four years 
ago, with her father's Secretary of Legation, a tall, handsome, 
dashing and somewhat reckless Prussian, and a connection or 
relative of Bismarck. This young Secretary belonged to a fine 
old Brandenburg Protestant family, which had decided notions 
against forming Catholic alliances. The young gentleman 
would have fallen heir, in time, to large estates in North Prus- 
sia ; but these were in some manner, as it is stated, made con- 
ditional upon his keeping up the. ancestral Lutheran faith. 



ROMANCE AT THE CAPITOL. 185 

This young Prussian chap, you may recollect as being the an- 
tagonist of one of our ministers, Lawrence of Central America, 
some two or three years ago, when the two met on what is 
called the field of honor, exchanged shots, and then patched up 
the fight without bloodshed. He paid court to Bertha Gerolt, 
and she was intensely enamored of him. In order to make the 
nuptials easy on both sides, Gerolt applied to the "Catholic 
Church authorities for an indulgence, or something, warranting 
the marriage of this hereditary Protestant with his Catholic 
daughter ; but as it was specified that the children issuing from 
such marriage were to be brought up Protestants, the Roman 
dignitaries refused. Gerolt, who appears sincerely to have 
wished to please his child, had also intentions upon the Pope ; 
but while these ecclesiastical efforts were being made, the do- 
mestic correspondence between the Secretary and his mother 
in Germany, and some ensuing letters from Madame, growing 
warmer and more indignant from time ttf time, had the effect 
of racking the poor girl's feelings ; and, in the end, the hand- 
some Prussian went home. This is an end to the matter up to 
the present. Bertha Gerolt refused to accompany either her 
father or mother to Germany, and has retired to the George- 
town Convent, where, some say, she will take the last veil ; and 
others that she will repent after a while, and reappear in the 
world. 

Opinion is divided in this city as to why Gerolt was remanded 
to his own country. Some say that he suffered certain indigni- 
ties at the hands of our State Department. Others allege that 
he was insufficient particularly about the time that American 
arms were shipped to France to be used against the Prussians. 
It is said that, on that occasion, Bismarck asked Mr. Bancroft 
why our goverment permitted such things ; and Bancroft, to 
make it easy for himself, retorted that there was Baron Gerolt 
in Washington, and, if he had been attending to his business, the 
arms would have been detained. Others say that Catacazy 
drew Gerolt into an intrigue, and got him to work against the 
late treaty which we made about the Alabama claims. • What- 



186 STYLE AND EXTRAVAGANCE. 

ever the facts, the Baron has gone for good, and his admirers 
here are preparing to forward him an elaborate service of sil- 
ver, to show that what he did for the country in its crisis is 
remembered at least by its private citizens. 

You have many a pretty girl in the West who would be ex- 
cited if the prospect were held out to her of marrying the Por- 
tuguese Secretary of Legation. Yet a Portuguese person of 
nearly that description was content to marry a negro girl the 
other day, at the Capital to which he was accredited. The Pe- 
ruvian minister's wife was raised here ; and the former Russian 
minister married the pretty daughter of a boarding-house keeper 
at Georgetown. Yet were any of them happier, or even richer ? 
I doubt it much. One New Year's day I saw a beautiful 
woman, reared here, who is soon to go to "Russia for life, and 
consort with candle eaters in a cold empire where the flag that 
was the pride of our babyhood does not float, where the 
music and the language we love is not spoken, and nfiddle age, 
and old age, and her children must be given to a people who 
can never know her like her countrymen. It is strange to see 
women deluded'into these alliances by some high fangled echo 
of a word, or a fashion-plate. As a rule, these foreigners ac- 
credited to the Capital of the United States are either politicians 
of the third class around the governments of their countries, or 
courtiers of the third class. An European courtier, reduced to 
his essentials, is a pleasing politician around his Capital, pres- 
sing to be provided for, fed, and rewarded. He has passed 
through the same straights, shrewnesses, and triumphs as an 
American politician, held up somebody's coat tail, been some- 
body's brother-in-law, owed his appointment to the pretty face 
of a sister, or he has written up the side of some patron, in a 
pamphlet or newspaper, and crowded all sail to be furnished 
with an exchequer in other parts. When an American" girl, 
therefore, marries " a member of the foreign legation," she mar- 
ries merely a politician or a noodle who can spe*ak only bad 
English," who probably marries her for her money or for his 
ennui, and who is habituated to having mistresses at home. 



MARRYING FOREIGN MINISTERS. 187 

I am not speaking of anybody, nor of everybody, in the 
foreign legations at Washington, when I thus produce the com- 
parative light of fact and experience upon them ; but as a 
general rule, I would not take a turn next door, to see a mem- 
c ber of legation. 

We know, by observation upon him at home, — that being in a 
white and gold cocked hat, a sword, a ruffled shirt, and a pair 
of scarlet and gold trousers, who came up before the President 
on the first day of the year, and bowed, and left his royal 
master's condescensions. 

It was with such feelings, — While recognizing many reverend 
and excellent gentlemen among the foreign ministers at a levee, 
and several persons of talent and pursuit, — that I ran my eye 
along the gaily attired line, — the romance of the name, and the 
livery gone from my mind ; while at the head of our State, in 
plain black, stood the little General who fought bigger battles 
than any of their Kings, and commanded a nation of men with 
more destiny than all their combined States possessed antiquity. 

The mystery and magic of the foreign service and uniform, 
are kept alive entirely by our American women. We men do 
not believe in them. If Miss Jane Smith, or the widow 
Tompkins, marries Signor Straddlebanjo, she ascends, in the 
female mind, to the seventh heaven of respect, while eating yet 
the same pork chops, -and taking milk from the same pump and 
milkman. 

Many of these gentlemen have found good wives and com- 
fortable homes among us! You are aware that the famous 
French Minister, Genet, set this example early, by retreating 
from the contempt of Washington, and the frown of Jefferson, 
into the bosom of the Clinton family, and never returned to 
France at all. That famous old rooster married three time? 
If I am well informed, in the United States, and some time a< 
when I was introduced in New York 'to a lawyp" 
politician named Genet, I said to liim musingly : 

" Why ! that was the name of the great 1 
Frenchman!" 



188 STYLE AND EXTRAVAGANCE. 

" My grandfather !" replied the politician of Tammany Hall. 

When Mr. Johnson shoved his friend, the Adjutant-General, 
through the tenure-of-omce act, he had little idea how he was 
hastening the marriage ceremony of little Bibbapron. Bibb- 
apron had fixed his engagement day for the first of July, so as 
to be in New York on the Fourth, and set off some firecrackers, 
after" which he expected to make some good resolutions to regu- 
late family life at Saratoga Springs. But people who are 
engaged, are always impatient. They are left alone together 
a good deal, and find waiting to be a sort of dissipation. It is 
neither pursuit nor possession, neither fish nor flesh. It is the 
tenderest, most quarrelsome, most tantalized, most disheartened, 
most forebode- ful period of love. No wonder that Bibbapron, 
when he heard of the " High Court of Impeachment," the 
solemnity of the spectacle," and the great learning of the 
managers and counsel, had but to suggest to Molly what a 
delightful time it would be to visit Washington, when she 
embraced himself, and the occasion. The milliner was hurried 
up. Ma was persuaded that Summer was an unhealthy season 
in the East. The little marriage ceremony was not held in the 
church, but in the parlor at home, and the clergyman's fee 
reduced somewhat in consequence. Bibbapron's papa gave his 
son a letter to Congressman Starch, and the express train saw 
the pair tucked in, the last tear shed, and the town of Skyuga 
fade from the presence of its prettiest girl. It is to tell all the 
engaged folks how to get to Washington and how to see it, that 
I reluctantly took Mrs. Bibbapron's diary and copy a few pages 
from it. They are strictly accurate, for which the other corres- 
pondents don't care to use them. Mrs. Bibbapron has a way 
of italicising every other word in diary, which I don't care to 
' nutate, and she makes a very pretty period with a tear, which, 
course, I cannot do. The diary was a present from her' 
'ster ; it had an almanac in it and blank washing lists, 
is from the poets under each date. Here it begins : 
^8 — Dear me, how tired ! I am in Washington, 
United States. It's not larger than New 



GETTING TICKETS. 189 

York, my husband, Alonzo, says, which I think is a great shame. 
Government ought to make it bigger right away, or have it 
somewhere where it would get bigger, itself. The maps are all 
incorrect about Washington, where it is represented by a great 
many dots, while all the other towns have only one dot. We 
went to Willard's Hotel, and, in order to give us a fine view 
of the city, they put us up in the top story. We went down to 
breakfast at nine o'clock, and called for oysters, of course. 
They tasted as if they had been caught in warm water. The 
fresh shad was quite a bone to pick. My dear husband took a 
cocktail before breakfast. He says it's quite the thing here. 
Senator Tatterson joined him, he says. I hope my husband 
will never be a drunkard!" 

N. B. — He says the Senator took his straight. 

Half-past ten o'clock. — Alonzo, my darling husband, has 
been to see Congressmen Starch, and brought him into the ladies' 
parlor. Pa can't abide Congressman Starch, because they 
differ in politics ; but Alonzo's Pa is a Republican, and lent 
Mr. Starch a horse and wagon, to bring up voters. I think it 
was very generous of the Congressman to ask so particularly 
about Pa's health. He gave me two tickets for the great trial. 
He saysthey are very scarce, and old ones are sold for relics 
for ever so much ■ money. The managers buy the old ones to 
paste their photographs on them, and present them to the 
Historical Societies. Congressman Starch says he lost his best 
constituent to give me these tickets, but told me to be particular 
not to tell Pa about it. He says Johnson is the great criminal 
of the age, and ought to have been impeached before he was 
born. There is no doubt, he says, that it was Johnson in dis- 
guise who murdered Mr. Lincoln, and then bribed Booth with 
a clerkship to be killed in his place. He says -that General 
Butler offers to prove that Boston Corbett was only Andrew 
Johnson, who killed Booth to keep him from telling. Poor 
Booth ! He died saying ' Poor Carlotta !' I never sing that 
song but tears come to my eyes, and I think of my husband. 
Alonzo will never kill the President. He was brought up a 
Baptist. 



190 STYLE AND EXTKAYAGANCE. 

Five o'clock, P. M. I have seen all the great patriots of our 
country. Mr. Sumner .is the greatest of them all, his hair is 
so exquisite. Mr. Brooks, of New York, who gave him such 
a beating, was on the floor of the Senate, wearing spectacles. 
He is a newspaper editor, and drives a pair of cream-colored 
horses. He must be a dreadful man, but is right good 
looking. Mr. Sumner forgives him, because he prints his 
speeches. 

I am going too fast, but really, I have so much to do to-day, 
that I don't know where to begin. We took the horse cars to 
the Capitol, and went along Pennsylvania Avenue. The 
National Hotel looks sick, ever since the celebrated disease 
there. I was surprised to see so many negroes in the car. 
Congress compels them to ride, in order to carry out the Civil 
Eights bill. The poor souls look dreadfully as if they wanted to 
walk some. Dear me ! I love to walk since I am married. I 
can take my husband's arm then and pinch him. It seems to me 
that we ain't happy unless we pinch those we love ! 

The Capitol is the grandest, most wonderful building in the 
whole world. It is all marble, with a splendid dome above it, 
and a perfect hide-and-seek of aisles, passage?, and gorgeous 
stairways. It looks like a marble quarry in blossom. They 
wash it every night, and the government officers spit it yellow 
every day. Alonzo says tobacco is bought by the ream, and 
charged to "stationery." He says that this is quite right, 
because when the members have a chaw in their mouths they 
speak less and save time. I hope my husband will never chew 
tobacco. Government ought to pass a law against it, and get 
the women to enforce it. On the top of the Capitol is a statue 
of Pocahontas, flying a kite ; I should think it ought to be 
Benjamin Franklin, but they have got him inside in marble. 
It will take millions and millions to furnish the Capitol. I sup- 
pose they will have nothing but Axminster carpets and oiled 
walnut. In the dome of the Capitol there are beautiful pic- 
tures. I liked the marriage of Pocahontas the best. She wears 
her hair plain, and her dress looks like a bolster case. The 



a bride's diary. 191 

Indian women have beautiful figures but their clothes are dow- 
dy. Some of them in this picture wear goose feathers for full 
dress, and look to have caught cold. But that's what's ex- 
pected of a bridesmaid. She dresses for a consumption ! 

We got good seats next to the Diplomatic Gallery. Alonzo 
pointed out the Russian Minister and his wife to me ; we ad- 
mired them very much till we heard that it was the Minister's 
Coachman and cook. The foreign Ministers send their servants 
here when they want their gallery to look genteel. Theodore 
Tilton was distinguished by his long hair. He has withdrawn 
the nomination of Chase, and ruined the Chief-Justice. He 
looks sad about it. Congressman Starch showed us the Chief- 
Justice, a man like Washington in holy orders. Mr. Starch 
said he would be impeached soon with all the Judges. The 
Bench, he says, is rotten. (Why not give them chairs?) He 
said if it had not been for the Bench, the constitution, which 
is the cause of all this trouble, would have been done 1 away 
with long ago. Dear me! an old rotten bench ought not to 
keep our country in such peril. The Senate Chamber is all 
buff and gilt, like an envelope on Valentine's day. There is a 
silver ice pitcher on the table of the President's counsel, which 
I believe is plated. I wish I could just go down and feel of it. 
They say that the Government is swindled in everything. Per- 
haps the coolest swindle is ice pitchers. This is mean. Wash- 
ington, Webster, and Mr. Starch must be incapable of it. If 
my husband ever comes to Congress I mean to work him a pair 
of slippers in red, white, and blue. Then he can't go across 
the street, like Mr. Alwusbeery to drink between votes, in his 
stocking feet. 

I saw Mrs. Southworth, the great novelist, author of the 
"Deserted Step-Mother." She lives at Georgetown in a haunt- 
ed boarding-house. Her health is good, considering what 
must be her distress of mind, say two hundred pounds without 
jewelry. Her dress was a black silk, tabs on the mantilla, 
and angel-sleeves, so as to leave space to swing her beautiful 
pen. If I could write like Mrs. Southworth, I would keep 



192 STYLE AND EXTRAVAGANCE. 

Alonzo, ray darling husband, sitting at my feet in tears all the 
time. 

Mrs. Swizzlem, the colored authoress of Mrs. Keckley's book, 
was in the diplomatic gallery with one of Mrs. Lincoln's dresses 
on, counting through an opera glass the pimples on the face of 
one of the Senators. She hates his wife, Alonzo says, and 
means to worry her. 

Mr. Thornton, the British Minister, looks very much worried. 
Congressman Starch says that Senator Chandler is a Fenian, 
and means to make a dreadful speech at poor Mr. Thornton. 
Alonzo is afraid it will miss fire, and kill some innocent per- 
son. Senator "Wade, the next President, looks like Martha 
Washington. He is a very pious man, beloved by everybody, 
and would have become a preacher if they had not wanted him 
so bad for President. 

Twelve A. M ! ■ Oh, dear ! that ever I was married ! Be 
still, »my poor soul ! I have heard of the wickedness of men — 
now I know it ! Last night I heard something like a wheel- 
barrow coming up stairs. It seemed to fall around, the elbows 
and upset at all the platforms. It tumbled right up to my 
room. The wheelbarrow burst right through the door ; first 
came the wheel and then pitched the barrow on top of it. The 
barrow was Congressman Starch, the wheel was — Alonzo. They 
joined themselves together again and wheeled forward, right 
up onto the bed. There were so many legs and so much motion 
and hallooing that I could not tell my husband from the other. 
I said, however: 

"Merciful Heavens! " 

To this replied my husband, in terms like the following: 

" Johnsing's gone up. Starchy threw cashting vote. Mime 
going tee be Conshul-General under Ben Wade — all hunk! " 

Said a voice, proceeding, as I conjectured, from the owner of 
that pair of legs which did not wear Alorizo's trowsers : 

"Yesh! bet your Impartial Justice according to zhee laws. 
Mime going ter be Secretary thinteeryer ! " 

I rang the bell and Avept. The waiters removed the Con- 



STYLE AND EXTRAVAGANCE. 193 

gressman. My husband snored. I hope the bed was buggy 
for he deserved it. In the morning, after a sleepless night, I 
heard Alonzo cry : 

" Miss Bibbapron ! Congress water ! " 

Now I know where this dreadful Congress water gets its 
name. It's what makes Senators tipsy. 

I hope the Impeachment trial will be done soon. Congress- 
man Starch shall never get my vote. Oh ! that I should be a 
bride and bring my husband to Washington ! " 



13 




WASHINGTON'S WHITE HOUSE AS IT WAS IN PHILADELPHIA, 1790. 

OHAPTEE XYI. 



THE WHITE HOUSE AND ITS OCCUPANTS. 

The President's residence down to 1800 was of a floating 
character ; now in New York, now in Philadelphia ; and the 
ladies of the Executive branch of the government were very 
like women in barracks with army officers ; sometimes sent 
into damp dwellings, again like the wives of Methodist preach- 
ers, perpetually waiting for ships to come with their clothes and 
carpets. 

Mrs. John Adams, in a volume of letters, edited by the late 
Minister to England, her grandson, which I have found in the 
Congressional Library, gives some lively sketches of a Presi- 
dent's wife. "Writing to her married daughter in the latter 
part of November, 1790, from Philadelphia, she speaks dole- 
fully of her quarters and those of the ladies of the Cabinet. 

" Poor Mrs. Knox, (wife of the first Secretary of War,) is 
in great tribulation about her furniture. The vessel sailed the 
day before the storm and had not been heard of on Friday last. 
I had a great misfortune happen to my best trunk of clothes. 
The vessel sprung a leak and my trunks got wet a foot high, by 
(194) 



MRS. ADAMS' DESCRIPTION. 195 

which means I have several gowns spoiled ; and the one you 
(Mrs. Smith) worked is the most damaged, and a black satin — 
the blessed effects of tumbling about the world." 

After a while the City of "Washington was laid out, and in 
the first year of this century, Mrs. John Adams started for the 
great new " Palace " of the President. The whole story is told 
in a letter to her daughter, Mrs. Smith, written November 21st, 
1800. It is notable as being probably the first letter ever writ- 
ten in the White House by its mistress : 

" I arrived here Sunday last, and without meeting with any 
accident worth noticing, except losing ourselves when we left 
Baltimore, and going eight or nine miles on the Frederick road, 
.by which means we were obliged to go the other eight through 
woods, where we wandered two hours without finding a guide 
or the path. Fortunately a straggling black came up with us, 
and we engaged him as a guide, to extricate us out of our diffi- 
culty ; but woods are all you see from Baltimore until you reach 
the city, which is so only in name. Here and there is a small 
cot, without a glass window, interspersed among the forests, 
through which you travel miles without seeing any human 

" The house is upon a grand and superb scale, requiring about 
thirty servants to attend and keep the apartments in proper 
order, and perform the ordinary business of the house and 
stables- — an establishment very well proportioned to the Presi- 
dent's salary. The lighting of the apartments from the kitchen 
to parlor and chambers, is a tax indeed ; and the fires we are 
obliged to keep to secure us from daily agues is another very 
cheering comfort. To assist us in this great castle, and render 
less attendance necessary, bells are wholly wanting, not one 
single one being hung through the whole house, and promises 
are all you can obtain. This is so great an inconvenience that 
1 know not what to do or how to do. * * * If they will 
put up some bells and let me have wood enough to keep fires, 
I design to be pleased. Surrounded with forests, can you be- 
lieve that wood is not to be had, because people cannot be 



196 WHITE HOUSE AND ITS OCCUPANTS. 

found to cut and cart it ? * * * Briesler has had recourse 
to coal ; but we cannot get grates made and set. We have 
indeed come into a new country. You must keep all this to 
yourself, and when asked how I like it, say that I write you the 
situation is beautiful, which is true. 

"The house is made habitable, but there is not a single 
apartment finished, and all within-side, except the plastering, 
has been done since Briesler (the steward) came. We have 
not the least fence, yard or other convenience without, and the 
great unfinished audience-room I make a drying-room of, to 
hang up the clothes in. The principal stairs are not up, and 
will not be this Winter. Six chambers are made comfortable ; 
two are occupied by the President and Mr. Shaw ; two lower 
rooms, one for a common parlor, and one for a levee room. 
Up stairs there is the oval room, which is designed for the 
drawing-room, and has the crimson furniture in it. It is a very 
handsome room now, but when completed, it will be beautiful. 
If the twelve years in which this place has been considered as 
the future seat of Government, had been improved, as they 
would have been in New England, very many of the present 
inconveniences would have been removed." 

Mrs. Adams, writing again November 27th, says that : " Two 
articles we are most distressed for ; the one is bells, but the 
more important is wood. Yet you cannot see wood for trees. 
We have only one cord and a half of wood in this house where 
twelve fires are constantly required. It is at a price, indeed ; 
from four dollars it has risen to nine ! " 

Again, Mrs. Adams shows us a picture of distress almost as 
bad as a Methodist preacher's wife's experiences : 

" The vessel which has my clothes and other matters is not 
arrived. The ladies are impatient for a drawing-room. 1 have 
no looking-glasses but " dwarfs" for this house ; nor a twen- 
tienth-part lamps enough to light it. Many things were stolen ; 
more broken by removal ; among the number my tea china is 
more than half missing. Georgetown affords nothing." 

Mrs. Adams was a preacher's daughter, married young, and 




THE CABINET CHAMBER IN THE WHITE HOUSE, OR PRESIDENTIAL 
MANSION, AT WASHINGTON. 



Jefferson's habits. 197 

she burst into tears when her husband got his first nomination 
to anything. They lived together fifty-three years. John was 
the son of a religious shoemaker, and himself a school-teacher. 
His conceit was large, his thrift equal to it, and all the Adamses 
since his day have not degenerated from these standards. They 
were the original Yankees of the White House, and it is re- 
markable that every Northern President has saved some of his 
salary, while the contrary is true of every Southerner but one. 
They kept the unfinished mansion in a righteous sort of way, 
drank a good deal of tea, shopped cheap, went to church through 
mud and snow, and the plasterers told so many stories about 
what they saw through the cracks that Congress elected Adams 
out, and demanded a man who should be a little wicked and 
swear some. Lemonade and oat-cakes were the standard lunch 
in those times. 

Jefferson liked his social glass ; he used darkeys to do the 
chores ; he had to pay his own secretary, like everybody else 
down to Jackson's time, provide his own library, and meet 
deficits out of his own pocket.* His wife, who had been a 
widow, like Mrs. Washington, died long before his accession, 
and he had a house full of daughters and adopted daughters. 
It was French republican simplicity and camp-meeting court- 
ing. Jefferson talked with everybody freely, disliked clergy- 
men, never had an opinion but he ventilated it ; but he held 
more than his own, because he was a great man, without affec- 

*It is common saying in these days, that it costs a President for the first time 
more than $25,000 per annum to live in Washington. Mr. Jefferson wrote in 
1807 : " I find on' a review of my affairs here as they will stand on the 3d of March, 
that I shall be three or four months' salary behindhand. In ordinary cases, this 
degree of arrearage would not bo serious, but on the scale of the establishment 
here, it amounts to seven or eight thousand dollars, which having to come out of 
my private funds, will be felt by me sensibly." He then directs his commission 
'merchant to obtain a loan from a Virginia bank, and adds : " I have been under 
an agony of mortification * * * Nothing could be more distressing 
to me than to leave debts here unpaid, if indeed, I should be permitted to depart 
with them unpaid, of which I am by no means certain." He may have appre- 
hended from tradesmens' rapacity, aided by political hostility, imprisonment for, 
debt. 



198 WHITE HOUSE AND ITS OCCUPANTS. 

tations. In those days, atheists, painters, editors, Bohemians, 
and carpet-baggers of all sorts, foreign and domestic, made 
free with the "White House. The President, red-haired and 
spindle-shanked, read all the new poems, admired all that was 
antique and all that was new, but nothing between times. The 
White House was hung with no red tape. It stood all this 
loose invasion because there was a real, sincere man in it. 

In Mrs. James Madison the present White House found its 
brilliant mistress, albeit she had been brought up a Quaker, Mis- 
tress Dolly Payne, then Mrs. Todd, widow, and at last the wife 
of Congressman Madison, who had been jilted early in life by 
Miss Floyd, her townswoman. Madison was well along in 
years when he married, and Mrs. Madison had to take care of 
him. He had no children. The place was clear there for out- 
side company, and it is questionable as to whether the house 
has at any time since been so well administered. Madison was 
a diminished and watered copy of Washington, and made a 
good parlor ornament. There was nothing little about him, 
except a general want of character, compensated for by a good 
deal of respectability Mrs. Madison made the big house ring 
with good cheer ; dancing was lively, as in Jefferson's time ; the 
lady was " boss," and, unlike most of her imitators, had the 
genius for it. The whole cost of the President's house, now 
perfectly completed, had been $333,307. 

After the British burne4 it, the total cost of rebuilding, and 
adding two porticoes, $301,496.25. The burning happened so 
unexpectedly, that one of Mrs. Madison's great dinners was 
eaten by the British, all smoking as they found it. The lady 
herself cut out of its frame a cherished portrait of Washington, 
still preserved in the mansion, and when the President returned, 
they opened house on the corner of Twentieth street and the 
avenue, near the " circle," on the way to Georgetown. . After 
Madison died, his widow rented a house opposite the White 
House, and kept up the only secondary, or ex-Presidential 
Court, ever held in Washington. 

Mr. Monroe's wife was a fairly wealthy lady of New York, 




THE BLUE ROOM AT THE WHITE HOUSE, OK PRESIDENTIAL 
MANSION, AT WASHINGTON. 



THE WHITE HOUSE. 



199 



and lie came to the Presidency at an era when all parties har- 
monized. The White House was quite a court in his day, as 
he had an interesting family, gave great dinners, and looked 
benevolently through his blue eyes, at all the receptions. He 
had no brilliant qualities, and therefore had no " nonsense 
about him." By this time the White House had been all re- 
stored and furnished, although the grounds were still a good 
deal like a brick yard. Let us look at the furniture of it in 
those days, little changed down to the period of Harriet Lane 
and Mrs. Lincoln. 

James Hoban built both the original and the reconstructed 
White House. It stands on ground forty-four feet above high 
water, but the drainage all around it is bad, so that fever and ague 
may be caught there if you only prepare your mind to get them. 
A small chest of homoeopathic medicines in the house is a sure 
preventative, whether you take them or not. The building is 




THE WHITE HOUSE. 

one hundred and seventy feet long and eighty-six deep, built of 
free-stone over all. There is an Ionic portico in front and 
rear, opening upon grounds of shade and lawn which are open 
to the public at all times. The front portico is double, so as 
to admit folks on foot and carriages also. About one-half of 
the upper part of this house belongs to the family elected to 
live in it, and also some of the basement ; but the whole of the 



200 WHITE HOUSE. AND ITS OCCUPANTS. 

first or main floor is really public property, and half the second 
floor is the President's business office. Therefore, ladies, you 
will own as much of the White House when you come to live 
in it, as you own of the hotel in which you board. 

The great mansion has a wide hall in it, a stairway on one 
side, leading up to the office-rooms, and at the bottom, or, to be 
less Cockney, the end of the hall, there is a large oval room, 
opening out of which are two parlors, left and right ; go through 
the room to the right and you enter the great dining-room ; go 
through the room to the left and you enter the large banqueting- 
room. Now see the size of these rooms, which you will per- 
ceive at once to be home-like as a connected series of meeting- 
houses : 

Hall (entrance), 40 by 50 feet. 

Oval room, 40 by 30 feet. \ 

Square parlors (left and right), 30 by 22 feet. 

Company dining-room, 40 by 30 feet. 

Banqueting (or East) room, 80 by 40 feet. 

All these rooms are twenty-two feet high. You will perceive 
that they are eminently cosy and contracted. The President's 
private rooms consist of a great barn-like waiting-room, and two 
or three connecting offices. Let us see how these rooms were 
furnished in the time of Monroe, Adams, and Jackson ; a de- 
scription which is nearly perfect for to-day. I get these facts 
from an old book, defunct since 1830, called " Jonathan Elliot's 
History of the Ten Mile Square." Oval-room, crimson flock 
paper, with deep gilt border ; crimson silk chairs, ditto window 
curtains ; one great piece of pattern carpet interwoven with arms 
of the United States ; tables and chimney-pieces of marble ; 
two huge mirrors and a cut-glass chandelier. Into this oval 
room the square rooms to left and right open on levee nights, 
with furniture as follows, distributed also amongst the dining- 
rooms : Paper of green, yellow, white and blue, respectively 
sprinkled with gilt stars and bordered with gold ; between the 
two dining-rooms, company and private, the china (not your 
own, ladies), is stored, and the provender (enough in all con 




:;:; ;; ; IPI1 

m m -■IP 

■:■■- 



THE EAST ROOM IN THE WHITE HOUSE, OR PRESIDENTIAL 
MANSION. AT WASHINGTON. 



N 



THE FAMOUS EAST ROOM. 



201 



science to pay for) is kept on ice, subject only to the trifling 
pilferings of the aristocratic steward, who commonly keeps two 
or three small groceries in the suburbs running. These rooms 
are plentiful with panelings, mirrors, chandeliers, and a paint- 
ing or two of not much consequence comes in. There was no 
gas in these rooms till the time of Polk, and everybody was 
greasy with candles. It looked like a perpetual secular mass, 
got up for the masses. The enormous East room had lemon- 
colored paper with cloth border ; four mantels of black marble 
with Italian black and gold fronts ; great grates, all polished ; 
a mirror over each mantel, eight and a half feot high by five 
feet wide, ponderously framed; 

M 



five hundred yards of Brus- 
sels carpet, colored fawn, blue 
and yellow with deep red bor- 
ders ; three great cut-glass 
chandeliers and numerous gilt 
brackets ; curtains of light 
blue moreen with yellow dra- 
peries, a gilded eagle holding 
up the drapery of each ; a 
cornice of gilded stars all 
around the room ; sofas and 
chairs of blue damask satin ; interior east room. 

under every chandelier a rich round table of black and gold 
slabs, and in all the piers a table corresponding, with splendid 
lamps above each ; rare French China vases, etc. 

Here, you have the "White House pretty much as it stands, 
barring the leaky roof that nobody can mend ; a huge hotel, 
full of the ghosts of dead men and the echoes of political gab- 
ble ; ringing of nights with the oaths of Jackson, the fiddle of 
Jefferson, the cooing of John Tyler, the dirges over the corpses 
of Harrison, Taylor, and Lincoln. If you come to live in it, 
you know nothing of who else is visitor. Marry a man who 
keeps a hotel, and you have about all that a President's lady 
possesses. 




202 WHITE HOUSE' AND ITS OCCUPANTS. 

John Quincy Adams was arraigned in the campaign of 1828 
for having put up a billiard table in the White House. This 
had been bought by his son and secretary, Charles Francis 
Adams, out of the latter's private allowance. It was the first 
billiard table ever set up in the White House. During his ad- 
ministration, the East room, in which his mother had hung 
clothes to dry, was so gorgeously furnished, that the Jackson 
people abused him for it on the stump, and in the party news- 
papers. He was the most perfect host, except Millard Fillmore, 
and possibly Frank Pierce, that the North ever gave to the 
White House: Modest, bold, widely experienced, he was the 
last learned man that has lived in the Executive Mansion, and 
more learned than any other occupant of it. He was too genteel 
to be re-elected. He went down to duty as cheerfully as to an 
apotheosis, and graduated out of the White House into Con- 
gress. 

" The White House," says James Parton, " has more in com- 
mon with the marquee of a Commander-in-Chief than the home 
of a civilized family. Take it, therefore, as it looked under 
Old Hickory, the archetype of Mr. Johnson. To keep up the 
Presidential hospitality, he had to draw upon the proceeds of 
his farm. Before leaving Washington, in 1837, he had to send 
for six thousand dollars of the proceeds of his cotton crop in 
order to pay the debts caused by the deficit of the last year's 
salary. A year previous to that time he had to offer for sale a 
valuable piece of land in Tennessee, to get three thousand dol- 
lars, for which he was in real distress. "Here in Washington," 
he says, " 1 have no control of my expenses, and can calculate 
nothing on my salary." 

Earl was the painter Carpenter of Andrew Jackson, and 
painted his portrait in the White House. Earl used to get 
orders because he had the ear of Jackson. Everybody in Chris- 
tendom poured into the White House in those days. Mrs. 
Eaton was the Mrs. Cobb of the time, and Jackson's most per- 
sistent public effort was to make people visit her. He used 
Martin Van Buren for the tolerably little business of forcing 







THE GREEN ROOM IN THE WHITE HOUSE, OR PRESIDENTIAL 
MANSION, AT WASHINGTON. 






ANDREW JACKSON. 203 

this lady into society, and finally dismissed all his cabinet and 
sent his daughter and son home to Tennessee, because they re- 
fused to embrace this lady. At the levees everybody ate cheese ; 
when there was no cheese they ate apples, cold smoked sausage, 
anything provided it had a smell. The place stank with old 
pipe and smoke ; it was redolent with Bourbon whiskey. For 
the first time the Executive Mansion became a police-office, a 
caucus-room, a guard-room, a mess-tent. But Jackson's vices 
were all of a popular sort. He called all his supporters by 
their first names. General Dale, of Mississippi, met Jackson 
strolling in the grounds in front of the President's house. 
(What President walks in the grounds familiarly any more ?) 
" Sam," said the General, " come up and take some whiskey." 
He shivered his clay pipes, uttering emphatic sentences. He 
invited his friends to roam at will in the White House. He 
used to smoke corn-cob pipes, which he whittled and bored 
with his own hands. He had a collection of pipes greater than 
has ever been seen in this country outside of a tobacco-shop. 
There was wine always on his table. He cracked hickory-nuts 
on a hand-iron upon his knee. The cold-blooded and impene- 
trable Van Buren he called " Matty," as if Mr. Johnson should 
address Mr. Seward as " Little Bill." He drove all sorts of 
odd coaches, had street fights, behaved like the incomprehen- 
sibly despotic old patriot that he was ; but the people always 
stood by him, because the people were about as bad as he was. 
He kept the city in dreadful fear ; all his friends were duelists 
and office-grabbers, desperate with thirst and low origin. Jack- 
son turned 2,000 people out of office in the first year of his 
reign. Prior to that time only seventy-three removals had 
been made in nearly half a century. Said one of Jackson's 
most intimate friends : 

"Our republic, henceforth, will be governed by factions, and 
the struggle will be, who shall get the offices and their emolu- 
ments — a struggle embittered by the most base and sordid pas- 
sions of the human heart." 

After the First Andrew had retired from the Presidency, he 
wrote to a Nashville newspaper in 1840, of Henry Clay : 



204 WHITE HOUSE AND ITS OCCUPANTS. 

" How contemptible does this demagogue appear when he 
descends from his high place in the Senate, and roams over the 
country retailing slanders against the living and the dead." 

Jackson also encouraged Sam Houston to waylay and brutally 
beat Congressman William Stanberry, of Ohio, for words spoken 
in debate, saying : "After a few more examples of the same 
kind, members of Congress will learn to keep civil tongues in 
their heads." He also pardoned Houston when the latter had 
been fined by a District of Columbia court for the same act. 

When the First Andrew left the White House with a farewell 
address, the New York American said : " Happily it is the last 
humbug which the mischievous popularity of this illiterate, vio- 
lent, vain and iron-willed soldier can impose upon a confiding 
and credulous people." Jackson returned home to Tennessee 
with just ninety dollars in money, having expended all his sal- 
ary and all the proceeds of his cotton crop. He was then an 
even seventy years of age, racked with pains, rheums, and pas- 
sions, a poor life to pilot by. 

Jackson kept two forks beside the plate of every guest, one 
of steel, another of silver, as he always ate, himself, with a 
steel fork. I have found in a sketch-book this picture of the 
White House as he was seen in it at his best : 

" A large parlor, scantily furnished, lighted from above by a 
chandelier ; a bright fire in the grate ; around the fire four or 
five ladies sewing, say Mrs. Donelson, Mrs. Andrew Jackson 
(adopted son's wife), Mrs. Edward Livingston^, &c. • Five or 
six children, from two to seven years of age, playing about the 
room, regardless of documents and work-baskets. At a dis- 
tant end of the apartment, General Jackson, seated in an arm 
chair, wearing a long, loose coat, smoking a long reed pipe, 
with a red Virginia clay bowl (price four cents). A little be- 
hind the President, Edward Livingstone, Secretary of State, 
reading a despatch from the French minister, and the President 
waves his pipe absently at the children to make them play less 
noisily." 

Martin Van Buren, the first of the New York politicians, 




THE RED ROOM IN THE WHITE HOUSE, OH PRESIDENTIAL 
MANSION, AT WASHINGTON. 



VAN BUREN AND HARRISON. 205 

and the political heir of Aaron Burr, was boosted into the 
White House by Jackson, to whom he played parasite for eight 
years, and who rode with him to inauguration. Van Buren's 
wife died in 1818 ; he had four sons ; kept the White House 
clean and decent, but never was heartily beloved. The East 
Room was one cause of his political death, as Ogle, a Pennsyl- 
vania Congressman, described it as a warehouse of luxuries 
bought with the people's money. Ogle mentioned every orna- 
ment and its cost, and the ladies kept all. the items going. Had 
Yan Buren been a married man, they would have " skinned " 
his lady in every dreadful drawing-room in the Union. Hap- 
pily the poor woman was dead. I forgot .to mention, that 
General Jackson's wife died of joy over his election. She was 
a very religious woman, very ignorant, and Jackson's friends 
thought it well that she was never tempted with the White 
House. 

The short month of President Harrison in the White House 
is chiefly memorable by his death. His was the first funeral 
ever held in the building. He was sixty-eight years old, a 
magnified physical portrait of William H. Seward, with some- 
thing of the bearing of Henry Clay. A full Major-General 
he had been, and, beloved by almost every one, his graces 
were nearly meek, except as relieved by the remembrance of 
his valor. The power of " hard cider," and " log cabin," 
nick names, while they elected him to the Presidency, also 
put him under a campaign pressure, which, added to the 
crowd of office-seekers who ran him down by day and night, 
quite terminated his life. He took cold seeking the outer 
air for privacy's sake, and diarrhoea carried him away. His 
last words were: "I wish the true principles of the gov- 
ernment carried out. I ask for nothing more !" 

John Tyler was the first President who brought a bride 
into the White House, as he was the first who buried a 
wife from its portal. The dead wife he had married in 
1813, the new one in 1844. He took the oath of office, 
owing to Harrison's dying during the recess of Congress, to 



206 WHITE HOUSE AND ITS OCCUPANTS. 

a District of Columbia Judge. The White House was there- 
fore in a tolerably dull condition all this time, and it im- 
proved very little under General Taylor. Two dead Presi- 
dents, one dead wife, and a widower's wedding are dismal 
stock enough for one house in five years. Tyler approaches 
Johnson in some disagreeable respects. He went back on his 
party, and never recovered good esteem even among traitors to 
the country. 

President Polk suggests something of Johnson in the place of 
birth, North Carolina, and in his place of adoption, Tennessee. 
He was just fifty years old when he took possession of the 
White House. Mrs. Polk was a daughter of Joel Childress, a 
merchant of Tennessee, and a Presbyterian, while the Presi- 
dent inclined toward the Methodists. She made a good host- 
ess and leaves a good name in the old mansion. 

As President Harrison was killed by office-seekers, President 
Taylor was killed by a Fourth of July, — standing out in the hot 
sun, after fourteen months' tenure of office. Taylor made more 
mistakes of etiquette than any other President, not excepting 
Mr. Johnson, but he had a heart. His war horse followed his 
rider's body out- of the White House gate. In those days Jeff 
Davis, son-in-law of the President, came familiarly to the White 
House. Taylor was a good father and a jagged old host. But 
he always meant well. 

Millard" Fillmore, his successor, was by odds the handsomest 
man that ever lived in the building, and also the most elegant. 
He was the American Louis Philippe. His wife died a few 
days after the expiration of his term, and also his daughter. 
Frank Pierce was a winning man, but without any large mag- 
netic graces. He rode horseback every day, unattended, miles 
into the country ; his wife was a perpetual invalid. 

We have now come clos© to the great clash of the rebellion. 
James Buchanan, the ancient news-carrier between Clay and 
Jackson, mounting upon the spiral stairs of office-holding, 
brought for his house-keeper, Hattie Lane, a red-haired, rosy- 
cheeked, buxom Lancaster county lass, not unused to fair 



m 

' JSP 

1 . ^i^SSH^I 




VIEW IN THE CONSERVATORY AT THE WHITE HOUSE, OR 
PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, AT WASHINGTON. 



LINCOLN AFD JOHNSON. 207 

society, and the only drawback to her perfect happiness in the 
White House was the old uncle himself. He bullied small pol- 
iticians who had served him at his own table before his niece, 
but in the sense of outward courtliness, when it suited him, 
there were few such masters of deportment as old Buck him- 
self. He fell, like all Northern dough-faces, into the hands of 
rebel thieves like Floyd, and did their bidding till the powder 
was hot for the match. 

Then came Abraham Lincoln with his ambitious wife. 

Afterward with Mr. Johnson came his invalid lady, and his 
daughters, Mrs. Patterson and the widow Stover. 



CHAPTEE XVII. 



A SERIES OF OPEN-AIR EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON TO GET 
RID OF POLITICS BULL RUN FIELD^r- THE OLD FORTS THE 

pauper's REST. 

On the ninth anniversary of the battle of the first Bull Run, 
I wrote these opening lines at the Robinson House, where the 
hottest battle was concentrated. That day, Sunday, two 
weeks, would have been the exact anniversary of the battle. 
How time flies ! It is a beautiful day, not quite so warm as 
the clay of the battle, and we are all looking at maps and 
eating soft-boiled eggs under Robinson's shed, with old Mrs. 
Robinson looking down on us benevolently. 

" Mrs. Robinson," says one of the ladies, " were you fright- 
ened when you saw they were going to fight a battle round 
your house ? " 

" Dear, dear, honey," says Mrs. Robinson, " I was so 
frightened that I can't tell you anything about it. 'Feared 
like I had done so many sins, they sent all their armies after 
me a purpose, that blessed Sabbath day. I jest got in the 
cellar and prayed, and the ole man he got under a bridge, and 
I 'spcct he prayed too. Thank the Lord for these bright, 
still Sundays now-a-days !" 

The old road to Bull Run. We paid twenty-five dollars for 
a fine, solid; showy team and two horses, and left Washington 
with four persons — one of us acting as driver — on Saturday 
afternoon at four o'clock. Country roads of a fair sort led us 
by Ball's Cross Roads, Upton Hill, Falls Church, and across 
the shallow branches of the Accotink to Fairfax Court House — 

(208) 



SOUTHERN MISFORTUNES. 209 

fully eighteen miles — where we put up for the night at the 
clean and not expensive tavern of Major Tyler, a cousin of 
the deceased President John Tyler, and formerly Commandant 
of Marines at Washington Barracks. 

Tyler is a thick-set, peculiar man, with big ears and small 
eyes and mouth, and a disposition to be amiable and lordly 
together. Altogether a man capable of furnishing good 
waffles, Maryland biscuit, and delicious slappers, with spring 
chickens and fresh eggs, and he keeps a cellar full of clear 
ice. The rest we produce from the carriage box, and, after 
supper, sitting on the upper veranda, we look down at the 
two little country stores, at the " chivs " talking about 
Governor Walker and Underwood, at the hard gravelly turn- 
pike up which Tompkins made that absurdly interesting raid, 
and at the brick court-house across the way, with freshly- 
cemented loop holes in the sides and gable, where George 
Washington's will is kept. The air is cool as early spring, 
and the moonlight makes a wondrous effect in this Virginia 
country, shining up the white streamers of the woods, tinging 
the woods, making rivers and bays of the clouds, so that every 
star breaking through seems to be the lamp set in a ship that 
rides there. 

" This is five hundred feet higher than Washington," says 
Major Tyler, it's the dividing ridge between the Accotink and 
the Occoquan. They set the court-house here wisely." 

" What brought you here, Major ? " 

" I had to do something, sir. I was a dishonored man if I 
did not give my services to my State. I put all my money — 
$36,000 — in Confederate securities, and left a place where I 
had been all my years of manhood. My property in Washing- 
ton is confiscated, and John Defrees, who bought it, makes me 
pay its taxes, and has, besides, insured my life, to protect 
himself in the property." 

Centreville is one of the most ruined of all hamlets. There 
were originally about thirty houses in it, a majority of which 
are now mere chimneys, standing erect among weeds, and 
14 



210 EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON. 

several of the houses which remain have been patched up with 
logs and planks, so that what stands is, if possible, more 
forbidding than what is destroyed. At present the only signs 
of life about Centreville seem to be one store, one shop, one 
new church, and one Methodist Sunday-school. There is no 
tavern in the place, and there seem to be no wells of water 
in the vicinity, and all the water is pulled from the branch, a 
half-dry arm of Bull Run. The site of Centreville is one of 
the noblest in Virginia, standing upon the tall spine of a long, 
crescent-shaped ridge, which bristles with dry forts along its 
whole profile, and makes against the sky a battlemented 
horizon, which might almost give suggestions to an architect. 
Seven different roads meet at Centreville, and in revived times 
it ought to be a busy place. 

One naturally expects, as he approaches a celebrated field 
soon after the event which commemorates . it, that he will 
observe many vestiges of the action. There are but two 
battle fields I have seen which bear out this character — 
Waterloo, where the loop-holed brick walls of the orchard 
remain as they were on the day of the fight, as well as the 
blackened ruins of the Chateau of Hougonmont.- The other 
battle-field is Bull Run, which is full of ruin, and the signs 
of ruin begin from the time you quit Fairfax Court-house, 
following the path of the Northern Army. In the first place, 
there is Fairfax itself, partly pulled down ; the Court-house, 
Which was loop-holed during three-fourths of the war, still 
showing the fresh bricks in it; the Jail, also loop-holed, and 
just on the outskirts of Fairfax a few bricks are lying upon 
each other to tell where existed the hamlet of Germantown. 

About a mile past Fairfax, the good turnpike runs off to 
Chantilly, the scene of Pope's final defeat, where Stevens and 
Kearney gave up their lives. Leaving this turnpike, our 
carriage descended into what is, above -all other highways 
known to man, a road to ruin — the road to Centreville. A 
forbidding and lonesome look marks this wide road from a far 
distance. Like all the old turnpikes of Virginia, it had been 



SOUTHERN DESOLATION. 211 

built in a staunch manner, with a hard, high limestone pave- 
ment in the middle of it : some of the stones white, and some 
red, but all large, hard, and set up endways ; and, formerly, 
this rampart of rock was covered with clay, sand, and gravel, 
so that it made the broad area of the road level and like a 
parade. Now the material part of the road in the centre has 
been washed free of all the gravel and the clay, so that it 
looks like -the naked skeleton of a blasted highway, the bones 
of a road once merry with life, and tinkling with teams. The 
only way to travel it at all was to take the side-paths, or what 
are called here the Summer roads, which sometimes run 
pleasantly for little skips, and then suddenly come to little 
•promontories of trap rock and outcropping limestone, at which 
we could see the ladies looking alarmed from a distance, and 
nervously holding tight their seats. This lonely, this desolate, 
this battle-accursed road runs from Fairfax almost due west 
for thirteen miles, passing through Centreville, and a short 
distance from Stone Bridge it is barred across its whole length 
by rails, for Stone Bridge is still a ruin after* five years of 
peace, and all wagons have to take to the fields, making a 
long detour, and fording Bull Run at a point where the long, 
aged, gnarled roots of the oaks, elms, and hemlocks form a 
Dantesque bank against the ford, while the other is a dark, 
succulent and snaky copse, with swamps, grape vines, and 
wild mixtures of dogwood, willow, and Virginia creepers. 
Through this defile, worthy of the pencil of Salvator Rosa, our 
city-made carriage moved like a London snob hunting in a 
Bungalee jungle, and directly we plunged to the hubs into 
Bull Run, a pretty stream of a reddish gray color, inclined to be 
muddy, with swampy banks, and crops of corn growing closely 
up to the margin. Below and above, the stream made an 
aisle of black light under the arch of the trees, and in the 
current grew bunches of duck-w T eeds, blue-stalked flags, and 
other aquatic leaves, the appearance of which indicated snakes 
beneath them. We made another long detour on the other 
side, and came to a pair of bars, which again admitted us to 



212 EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON. 

the turnpike, and here we made inquiries at the Van Pelt 
House, and then retreated, over the track taken by Tyler's 
division, to the celebrated stone bridge. The turnpike was 
grown up into long green grass, and before we got to the 
bridge we saw a snake wriggle off before the horses' hoofs. 
Close by the bridge we took the horses out of their harness, 
descended beneath the abutments of the bridge, spread shawls 
for the ladies, and proceeded ourselves to cross the. stream by 
certain stones and fish-boxes which span it. We had no 
sooner put our feet on the first stones than three black water- 
snakes dropped noiselessly into the water, and swam away. A 
black boy coining by told us that the stone bridge had become 
a spot where you are always sure to see snakes, and that 
sometimes they lie up on the tall red abutments, and throw 
themselves with a lifeless plash into the water. 

I sat .by the single arch of red limestone — broken, grass- 
covered, the parapets of the approaches overgrown — and heard 
the dark water, sing and curdle along under the natural 
ledges of rock, and saw the turnpike, barred by worm-fences 
and deep with grass, where once, in times of peace, the young 
men rode courting, the buggies rolled to church, the runaway 
negroes slipped Northward by night, the cattle and sheep 
limped in dusty groves to slaughter, and finally, where great 
guns rumbled, and the troops stacked arms to rest, and 
thought of death close by. All these images were faint by the 
light of this highway of desolation, and these appealing abut- 
ments stretching toward each other, and seeking to span the 
river. What a little stream to be known round the world — 
fordable every few rods, not above sixty feet wide — yet, withal, 
a stream of dignity and austerity ! The timber that grew 
along the half morasses here and there upon its borders, was 
high and branching ; the morasses themselves were full of 
'rank grass, and the movement of the water was sullen and 
dull, as if it loved to tarry in the dark pools and drew back 
from the light. To left and right the woods closed in upon 
the visitor, and over these tree tops careened the tall hills, 



BULL EUN. 213 

with but one house in sight, and a vague suggestion besides 
of Robinson's shanty in some huddling fruit trees, which 
carried a human intimation. Looking back toward Centre- 
ville from the bridge, a group of negro quarters and a small 
house stood on one side in an out-field, and a new negro hut, 
solitary in a cornfield, on the other, both backed by wood. 
Down this road the half- willing troops of Tyler had moved at 
daylight, blocking up the way, delaying Hunter's men, and 
these last had finally reappeared across the bridge, their 
advance measured by the clouds of dust, which were denser 
and higher than the cannons' smoke. 

We followed up this turnpike to where the Ludley Ford 
road crossed it at right angles, down which, marching South- 
ward, the flanking division of Hunter came, and by the white 
cabin of Matthews it unfolded from column to line, stretching 
three-quarters of a mile, and staking a fringe of skirmishers to 
the front. All the forenoon the contest was to carry the turn- 
pike, and release the divisions behind the stone bridge. By 
beating Evans and Bee this much was accomplished, and then 
the battle was transferred to the other end of the turnpike, 
where one long, oval hill, the promontory of a high plateau, 
stretched from the turnpike to the Ludley road, and on this 
exalted cape the first armies of civil war fought. What was 
the» real battle of Bull Run was on a space of ground not above 
two hundred acres in a,rea. The shape of this hill is defined 
by two rivulets tributary to Bull Run : that in front called 
Young's Branch, which twice crosses the turnpike, once at 
the cross roads, and again nearer Bull Run, crossed in the 
latter case by a small wooden bridge. The back side of the 
hill is cQvered with small wild timber, oak and pine, which 
leave the summit and the slopes toward the roads nearly bare. 
Upon the bare parts the fiercest battle raged for three hours 
around two small common farm houses — Robinson's, nearest 
Bull Run, and Henry's, near by the Ludley road. The 
Federal troops were strongest,, along the latter half-sunken 
country road, and they formed a line of battle like a carpenter's 



214 EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON. 

square, while the rebels made a line like a crescent in the 
edge of the low woods, which half covered their battalions. 
The length of the line of battle was about half a mile, or less, 
and the Confederate batteries were massed on their right, and 
the Federal batteries on their own right, respectively. Upon 
this small oval summit a fight as desperate as any of the war 
took place, fiercest around the shanty called the Henry House, 
confined almost entirely to musketry and artillery, and the 
hottest contests for the batteries, whose horses had been 
quickly killed. 

At present, this hill is marked with a few gulleys, where the 
rains have washed, and by many excavated pits where the dead 
have been disinterred. The country for many miles hereabout 
is plainly revealed, the monument at Groveton, on the second 
battle-field of Bull Run, showing distinctly, and Manassas Junc- 
tion, a fine white village, five miles away, is seen through a 
fissure in the timber. 

I ascertained these facts about the persons who occupied the 
dwellings on the battle-field of the first Bull Run ; the first 
house on the Warrenton turnpike, to the right hand, after 
passing the stone bridge, is occupied by Mr. Donahue, who 
lives in the house of the widow Van Pelt. 

This house is a pleasant frame dwelling, surrounded by tall 
and umbrageous trees, and it was the only house in sight from 
the stone bridge, on the day of the battle. All the buildings 
stand, though the barn was shelled through and through, but 
on this particular farm no fighting was done, yet across it hun- 
dreds of troops retreated, to re-cross Bull Run. 

The second house to the right is that of Gus. Van Pelt, in 
which Bob Paine now lives; this house shows, marks of .the 
fight, and the farm was well fought over on the morning of the 
action. 

The third house on the right of the turnpike is a very pecu- 
liar one, and no man who figured in that action can well forget 
it. It is a large, oblong, red lime-stone house, built of large 
blocks, and it stands nearly at the junction of the Ludley road. 
It is owned by Mr. Starbuck, who was a sutler in the Federal 



SCENE OF THE BULL-RUN BATTLE. 217 

army, and, who, true to his army instincts, keeps a house e's 
entertainment there now. This house was well-riddled in the 
battle with shell and ball, and was set on fire sometime during 
the day, but the neighbors, in a very neighborly manner, over- 
came their fear so far as to rush in and put the fire out. All 
accounts, even the most moderate, agree that the Northern 
troops put the highest construction on the crime of treason, on 
the day of the battle of Bull Run, and set fire to whatever 
would burn. 

Turning to the left of the turnpike, the first place beyond the 
stone bridge is the celebrated Jim Robinson's farm, which was 
©ne of the centres of the elliptical battle of the afternoon — the 
other centre being a farm of the widow Henry, just to the right 
of it, a quater of a mile. 

Our party made an impromptu dinner in the cool lawn before 
Jim Robinson's house ; for Jim is a venerable free negro who 
owns his own farm and the house, and his regular business is 
keeping drove cattle, and fattening them, on their road to 
Washington, but since the battle of Bull Run, he also furnishes 
fresh eggs, salt pork, fresh milk,, and occasionally a spring 
chicken, for any visitors willing to pay for such luxuries. We 
gave Robinson about eighteen and three quarters cents a head 
for a very excellent lunch, and had our horses fed for a quarter 
a head. He had just built an aristocratic extension to his log 
cabin, consisting of a two-story plank structure, still in the 
hands of the carpenter. The old house is marked in fifty places 
with Minie balls, and Robinson's sons have collected a large 
coffee-pot full of canister, bullets, and conical balls, and they 
have half a barrel of grape, and bits of shell and rifle projectiles, 
plowed up in the fields. Robinson is a conservative Republican, 
and his eldest son who was a servant to General Beauregard 
during the war, said to me : 

" Most all the colored people are Republicans, although a few, 
who know no better, have been coaxed over to the Democracy. 
We are not violent party men, sir — father and his sons — but 
we think that for the present, our interest lies that way. They 



214 EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON. 

sere a Union League down at Manassas, but I reckon it is a 
sort of playing out," 

The Robinsons, in fact, are rather opinionated and exclusive 
colored folks, having been born free, and the old man has a 
wonderful way of parading large and philosophic terras, his 
ignorance of which is so well covered by a benignant and plausible, 
manner, that one listens with a mixture of humor and awe. 
During the battle, old Robinson hid under a bridge beneath the 
turnpike road, where he says there were about fifty of his 
neighbors, white and black, making a mottled and shivering 
democracy. His son went over to the Lewis house, then known 
by the name of " Portico" — every Virginian capable of living 
between two chimneys, dignifying his estate with a memorial 
title. The Lewis house was the headquarters of both Beaure- 
gard and of Johnston ; it stood on a round hill about a mile 
back of the Robinson and Henry houses, and was surrounded 
with ancient shade trees, and with orchards. From this point 
the operations of the battle were mainly conducted. Lewis 
acted as a sort of guide to the Confederate army, during much 
of the war, for he had a thorough knowledge of the streams, 
nooks, bridges, and cattle-paths in all this region. ' His house 
stood until the day of the second battle of Bull Run, when some 
Federal camp-followers set it on fire, and burnt it to the ground. 
"We saw Lewis and his family returning from church as we 
entered Robinson's place, and, mounted on a frisky young sorrel 
colt, he politely opened and shut the gate for us. His daughters 
and sons all rode horses, and it was interesting to see that two 
girls rode one horse, the girl behind having no saddle. Lewis 
is a sandy-haired, sandy-bearded man of middle age, and of 
quick, nervous temperament. 

Ed. Carter, (pronounced all through Virginia as Kyarter), 
lives on a part of the battle field, and like everybody else in that 
region, is scarcely able to make a living. 

I walked from Robinson's to the widow Henry's, over a 
part of the field where the most terrific fighting happened, 
passing the spot where the two rebel Generals, Bee and Barton, 



JACKSON NAMED " STONEWALL." 217 

were struck dead. A block of marble was set up to Bee's 
memory, after the first battle of Bull Run, but when Joe John- 
ston deserted Manassas, in the spring of 1862, Northern soldiers 
cracked the stone to pieces, and carried off the chips for relics. 
Bee was an able officer, raised by the United States, and it was 
he who gave the name of " Stonewall" to Thomas Jonathan 
Jackson, as the latter came to his support in the action. 
" There stands Jackson," he said, " like a stone wall." 
As we approached the Henry house, we saw a woman, dressed 
in black, picking flowers in the fields. She was the daughter 
of the widow Henry, who suffered a cruel death in her own 
house. She was aged and an invalid, and when the battle sud- 
denly surged up to her house, her children sought safety in 
various places and left the old woman in bed. The full hurri- 
cane of the action burst right ro*und this old shanty, an.d the 
unfortunate woman was cut all to pieces with shell, ball, and 
bullets, and the house itself was torn to flinders ; they could 
scarcely recognize her body after the fury of the fight was over. 
The Henry house is now replaced by a small frame building 
painted blue, with end chimneys outside, and in the yard of this 
dwelling stands in the open sun a small monument made of red 
limestone, from the banks of the Bull Run, two miles away ; the 
monument is about sixteen feet high, and is capped with a large 
rifle projectile, while round the corners of the base four other 
cones of stone and exploded shell are raised, the wli3le edifice 
standing upon a mound of sod which has given way, so that it is 
probable the whole thing will tumble down in a few years. A 
white stone says in crudely carved letters, " Honor to the 
patriot dead !" But round the monument' are neat little wooden 
signs on each of the four sides, which tell the story of the sur- 
roundings. One says .that near that spot were captured parts 
of Griffin's, Rickett's, and other batteries. Another sign says 
that Stonewall Jackson was wounded hard-by, and that here he 
got his historic appellation. The fourth sign says that twenty- 
four Federal soldiers lie beneath. The monument is leaning, 
from defective foundations, and will soon tumble down. 



218 EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON. 

The number of people lost in this battle attests, and by its 
equality as well, that it was a well maintained conflict. The 
rebel killed and wounded numbered 1,857, one-fifth of them 
slain. The Federal killed and wounded were 1,492, one-third 
slain. These official figures are probably too low on both sides. 
About one thousand persons gave up the ghost on this field. 
The Federal loss in all was ten cannons captured, besides seven- 
teen others abandoned, and 4,000 muskets thrown away. Nearly 
one-third of the men afterward prominent in bofli armies, 
fought iii'the first battle of Bull Run, as subordinate officers. 

Nine years after this battle has happened, we begin to feel 
that we walk upon the solid ground, in estimating its heroes 
and its importance. 

In the first place, we have learned to estimate the character 
of McDowell, who planned 'this battle with a cool, wise head, 
and fought it out upon this plan according to the best advan- 
tage he could make of the material that lay at his command. 
No other battle during the whole war was better devised, and 
none in the East, fought on the offensive, during the next three 
years, had more nearly been successful. The Federal Comman- 
der was assailed for the folly of his troops here as few comman- 
ders have ever been, and yet he kept up heart, stood patiently 
by the cause, took a third-rate place under McClellan with 
generous resignation, and gave all the successive men placed 
over him hearty support, and since the death of George IT. 
Thomas, it is safe to say there is no man in the United States 
upon whom we can rely for judgment, for devotion, for willing- 
ness to suffer above the common fate of all who suffered then, 
more than Irving McDowell. 

Last winter, when the Army of the Potomac met at Phila- 
delphia, and McDowell sat quietly amongst them, thinking him- 
self an unsuccessful man, and one set down amongst the failures 
of the war, a quiet young officer arose with his glass in his hand, 
and proposed the health of General McDowell. As he did so, 
he made a stammering effort to say that since the war had 
passed by, and we had come to know mail for man, and man 



JUSTICE TO GEN. McDOWELL. 219 

to man, we were equal to the appreciation of the Commander 
of the first Army of the Potomac. At once the whole table 
rattled with bravos and hearty cheers, and amidst more applause 
than had greeted the name of any man that night, McDowell 
rose, profoundly moved, the most patient and heroic martyr 
of the war, and he said as he always had said, that he knew 
the justice of his countrymen would come at last ; that he had 
expected it long before, but that he had not complained, because 
he knew that it would come ; and then his cold, regular army 
nature melting down to the occasion, he gave a little burst of 
egotism which was truer than tears, because it was both the 
occasion and himself. 

We reached home after midnight on the seccmd day, after a 
ride of fifty-six miles in sixteen hours. There were a good 
many old shoes and tin cups-on the way, and a bridge of preca- 
rious fence-rails crosses Cub Run. 

I climbed the high hills one day on the other side, and push- 
ing up by-paths through bramble and laurel, gained the ram- 
parts of old Fort Stanton. 

How old already seem those fortresses, drawing their amphi- 
theatre around the Capital city ! Here the scarf had fallen off 
in places ; the abatis had been wrenched out for firewood ; even 
the solid log platforms, where late the great guns stood on tip- 
toe, had yielded to the farmer's lever, and made, perhaps, joists 
for his barn, and piles for his bridge. The solid stone portals 
opening into bomb-proof and magazine, still remained strong 
and mortised, but down in the battery and dark subterranean 
quarters the smell was rank, the floor was full of mushrooms ; 
a dog had littered in the innermost powder magazine, and 
showed her fangs as I held a lighted match before me advanc- 
ing. Still the old names and numbers were painted upon the 
huge doorways beneath the inner parapet : " Officers quarters, 
21," " Mess, 12," " Cartridge Box, 7." But around the slopes 
of the fort, among the bush and in the laurel clearing free 
negroes had built their cabins out of the wrecks of battery wag- 
on and sentry-box, and down the paths that the cannoniers had 



220 EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON. 

made in the moist hill sides, negro men and women, with pails 
and bundles on their heads, went jogging steadily, as in the 
first listless experience of self-ownership. 

What a picturesque and stirring crime is war ! Suggestively 
useless are the monuments it leaves, but touching the imagina- 
tion far more than the lordliest architectures of peace. Now 
do we feel among these shriveled moats and salients that the 
Capital city of our country has some surroundings to make it an 
inspiration. These wrecks of its defences will be some day the 
picnic haunts of curious patriotism, when Washington has grown 
to be a great city. Greater than its founders ever wished ! 

I climbed upon the windiest corner of the rampart and looked 
down at the town. Its site is a noble one, — a bowlder bottom, 
it seemed to be, like the green meadows of those ancient 
salt esftiaries in Holland, where the lambs play in the caverns 
of the fishes. Sloping up from the huddle of the city, the 
landscape stretched into far spines and capes of lofty wood- 
land, and amidst them the dome of the Capitol crouched merely, 
as if driven into the ground. At my feet the navy yard lay, 
very silent, surrounded by its monitors and men-of-war ; over 
the ravine of road behind me Booth galloped with his ghost on 
that Good Friday night ; beyond the bridge he had crossed, 
the little, lonely cemetery of Congress lay on the river bank. 
I could make out the Treasury and the Capitol, like two towers 
of a great suspension bridge, and Washington city swung be- 
tween them, like a great drove of speckled cattle crossing 
between the cables. It is impossible that this city slaall not be 
a beautiful and respected one. But the curse of it and the 
country is the infamous system «of rotation in office, whereby 
our Capital is peopled with periodicald roves of hungry adven- 
turers, who expect to steal a patrimony in four years. 

About twenty thousand acres of wood land were felled around 
Washington to give play for the artillery of the forts. The 
fifty-six forts mounted from ten to fifty guns each ; the batteries 
from three to twelve, making between eight and nine hundred 
guns in all. These were connected by rifle pits seven feet high, 



WASHINGTON ALMS-HOUSE. 221 

and Alexandria's military road passed in from the rear of all 
these works through valley parts to conceal the movements of 
soldiers.* 

A stranger in Washington looking down the wide outer ave- 
nue, named " Massachusetts," which goes bowling from knoll to 
knoll and disappears in the unknown hills of the East, has no 
notion that it leads anywhere, and gives up the conundrum. 
On the contrary it points straight to the Washington Asylum, 
better known as the District Poor-house, an institution to 
become hereafter conspicuous to every tourist who shall prefer 
the Baltimore and Potomac, to the Baltimore and Ohio rail- 
road ; for the new line crosses the Eastern Branch by a pile- 
bridge nearly in the rear of the poor-house, and let us hope 
that when the whistle, like 

" the pibroch's music thrills 

To the heart of those lone hills," 

the dreary banks and bluffs of the Eastern Branch will show 
more frequent signs of habitation and visitation. 

To visit the Poor-House one must have a "permit" from the 
mayor, physician, or a poor commissioner. Provided with this, 
he will follow out Pennsylvani Aavenue over Capitol Hill, until 
nearly at the brink of the Anacostia or Eastern Branch, when 
by the oblique Avenue called " Georgia" he will pass to his 
right the Congressional burying ground, and arriving at the 
powder magazine in front, draw up at the alms-house gate, a 
mile and a quarter from the palace of Congress. 

*The line of earth forts built to defend Washington city in the Summer, Fall and 
early Winter of 1861 was reported on the seventh of December of that year by 
Chief Engineer Barnard to number forty-eight works, mounting over three hun- 
dred heavy guns : the actual defensive perimeter occupied was about thirty-five 
miles, exceeding the Torres Vedras by several miles, which were previously the 
most extensive. Of these forts several were outside the Columbia line in Mary- 
land, all in Montgomery County, as follows : Fort Sumner, Fort Kirby, Fort Cross, 
Fort Davis : and Fort Mansfield, Fort Bayard and Fort Simmons. The three first 
named covered the Chain Bridge and the riveY side-ways, and were strengthened 
besides by Battery Bailey, Battery Benson and Battery Alexander, as well as by 
a blockhouse looking down the Chain Bridge line. The field batteries of McClel- 
lan's army at, or soon after, this time assembled around Washington, consisted of 
520 guns served by 12,500 men. 



222 EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON. 

It is a smart brick building, four stories high, with green 
trimmings, standing on the last promontory of some grassy 
commons beloved of geese and billy-goats. The short, black 
cedars, which appear to be a species of vegetable crape, give a 
stubby look of grief to the region round the poorhouse, and 
thickest at the Congressional Cemetery, screen from the paupers 
the view of the city. Across the plains, once made populous 
by army hospitals, few objects move except funeral processions, 
creeping toward the graveyard or receding at a merry gait, 
and occasional pensioners, out on leave, coming home dutifully 
to their bed of charity. The report of some sportsman's gun, 
where he is rowing in the marshes of the gray river, some- 
times raises echoes in the high hills and ravines of the other 
s"hore, where, many years ago, the rifles of Graves and Cilley 
were heard by every partisan in the land. Now the tall forts, 
raised in the war, are silent and deserted ; the few villas and 
farmhouses look from their back-ground of pine upon the 
smart edifice on the city shore, and its circle of hospitals 
nearer the water, and its small-pox hospital a little removed, 
and upon the dead-house and the " Potter's Field," at the rivei 
brink. We all know the melancholy landscape of a poor- 
house. 

The Potter's Field preceded the Poor-house on this side by 
many years. The almshouse was formerly erected on M street, 
between Sixth and Seventh, and, being removed here, it burned 
to the ground in the month of March, fourteen years ago, when 
the present brick structure was raised. The entire premises, 
of which the main part is the almshouse garden, occupy less 
than fifty acres, and the number of inmates is less than two 
hundred, the females preponderating in the proportion of three 
to one. Under the same roof are the Almshouse and the Work- 
house, the inmates of the former being styled " Informants," 
and of the latter" Penitents." The government of the Insti- 
tution is vested in three commissioners, to whom is responsible 
the intendent, Mr. Joseph F. Hodgson, a very cheerful and 
practical-looking " Bumble." 



WASHINGTON ALMS HOUSE. 223 

Every "Wednesday the three commissioners meet at this 
Almshouse and receive the weekly reports of the intendent, phy- 
sician, and gardener. Once every year these officers and the 
matron, wagoner, and baker are elected. Sixteen ounces of 
bread and eight ounces of beef are the ration of the district pau- 
per. The turnkey, gate-keeper, chief watchmen, and chief nurses 
are elected from the inmates. The gates are closed at sunset, 
and the lights go out at 8 p.m., all Winter. The inmates wear 
a uniform, labelled in large letters : Work-House or Wash- 
ington Asylum. 

The Poorhouse is an institution coeval with the Capital. 
We are told that while crabbed old Davy Burns, the owner 
of the most valuable part of the site of Washington city, was 
haggling with General Washington over his proportion of lots, 
his neglected and intemperate brother, Tommy, was an inmate 
of the Poorhouse. 

Thus, while the Romulus of the place married his daughter 
to a Congressman, and was buried in a " mausoleum," on H 
street, Remus died without the walls and mingled his ashes, 
perhaps, with paupers. 

The vaunted metropolis of the republican hopes of mankind, 
for such was Washington, the fabulous city, advertised and 
praised in every Capital of Western Europe, drew to its site 
artists, adventurers, and speculators from all lands. From 
Thomas Law, a secretary of Warren Hastings, who wasted the 
earnings of India on enterprises here, to a Frenchmen who died 
on the guillotine for practicing with an infernal machine upon 
the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, the long train of pilgrims 
came, and saw, and despaired, and many of them, perhaps, lie 
in the Potter's Field. Old books and newspapers, chary on 
such personal questions, contain occasional references as to 
some sculptor's suicide, or to the straits of this or that French 
officer, or Claimant about Congress ; and we know that Major 
L'Enfant, who conceived the plan of the place, sought refuge 
with a pitying friend and died here penniless. 

The long war of twenty years in Europe brought to America 



224 EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON. 

thousands in search of safety and rest, and" to these the mag- 
netism of the word " Capital " was often the song of the 
siren wiling them to the Poor-house. By the time Europe had 
wearied of the sword, the fatality attending high living, large 
slave-tilled estates, the love of official society, and the defective 
education of the young men of tide-water Virginia and Mary- 
land, produced a new class of native-born errants and broken 
profligates, at Washington, and many a life whose memories 
began with a coach and four and a park of deer, ended them 
between the coverlets of a poorhouse bed. The old times were, 
after all, very hollow times ! We are fond of reading about 
the hospitality of the Maclisonian age, but could so many have 
accepted it if all were prosperous ? 

In our time work being the fate and the redemption of us 
all, the District Almshouse contains few government employees. 
Now and then, as Mr. Hodgson told us, some clerk, spent 
with sickness or exhausted by evil indulgences, takes the 
inevitable road across the vacant plains, and eats his pauper 
ration in silence or in resignation, but the age is better, not, 
perhaps, because the heart of man is changed, but in that 
society is organized upon truer principles of honor, of manful- 
ness, and of labor. The class of well-bred young men who are 
ashamed to admit that they must earn their living, and who 
affect the company of gamesters and chicken-fighters, has some 
remnants left amongst us, but they find no aliment in the 
public sentiment, and hear no response in the public tone. 
Duelling is done ; visiting one's relatives as a profession is 
done ; thrift is no more a reproach, and even the reputation 
of being a miser is rather complimentary to a man. The 
worst chapters of humanity in America are those narrating 
the indigence of the old agricultural families on the streams 
of the Chesapeake ; the quarterly sale of a slave to supply, the 
demands of a false understanding of generosity ; the in- 
human revelling of one's friends upon the. last possessions of 
his family, holding it to be a jest to precipitate his ruin ; the 
wild orgies held on the glebe of some old parish church, horses 



MISERY AT WASHINGTON. 225 

hitched to the gravestones, and punch mixed in the baptismal 
font ; and at the last, delirium, impotence, decay ! Let those 
who would understand it read Bishop Meade, or descend the 
Potomac and Rappahannock, even at'this day, and cross certain 
thresholds. 

The Washington Poor-house seems to be well arranged, except 
in one respect : under the same roof, divided only by a parti- 
tion and a corridor, the vicious are lodged for punishment 
and the unfortunate tor refuge. 

We passed through a part of the building where, amongst 
old, toothless women, semi-imbecile girls — the relicts of error, 
the heirs of affliction — three babies of one mother were in 
charge of a strong, rosy Irish nurse. Two of them, twins, 
were in her lap, and a third upon the floor, hallooing for joy. 
Such noble specimens of childhood we had never seen ; heads 
like Caesar's, eyes bright as the depths of wells into which one 
laughs and receives his laughter back, and complexions and 
carriage of high birth. The woman was suckling them all, and 
all crowded alternately, so that they made the bare floors and 
walls light up with pictures. A few yards off, though out of 
hearing, were the thick forms of criminals, drunkards, wantons, 
and vagrants, seen through the iron 'bars of their wickets, rais- 
ing the croon and song of an idle din, drumming on the floor, 
or moving to and fro restlessly. Beneath this part of the Alms- • 
house were cells where bad cases were locked up. The asso- 
ciation of the poor and the wicked affected us painfully. 

Strolling into the syphilitic wards, where, in the awful con- 
templation of their daily, piecemeal decay, the silent victims 
were stretched all day upon their cots ; amongst the idiotic 
and the crazed ; into the apartments of the aged poor, seeing, 
let us hope, blessed visions of life beyond these shambles ; and 
drinking in, as we walked, the solemn but needful lessons of 
our own possibilities, and the mutations of our nature, we stood 
at last amongst the graves of the Almshouse dead — those who 
have escaped the dissecting knife. Scattered about with little 
stones and mounds here and there, under the occasional sullen 
15 



226 EXCURSIONS AROUND WASHINGTON. 

green of cedars, a dead-cart and a spade sticking up as sym- 
bols, and the neglected river, deserted as the Styx, plashing 
against the low banks, we felt the sobering melancholy of the 
spot, and made the prayer of " Give me neither poverty nor 
riches !" 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 



AMENDMENTS PROPOSED TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED 

STATES. OUGHT THE SENATE TO BE ELECTED BY 

THE PEOPLE? 

The experience of more than fourscore years has shown that 
many things in our Government need amendment. A great 
many propositions have been made to effect reforms in the 
nature of our Government. Mr. Morton has proposed to abol- 
ish the electoral college; Mr. Robertson to establish a tribu- 
nal which shall' decide questions in the electoral college; Mr. 
Pomeroy to make the States regulate the basis of citizenship 
in their own way; Mr. Drake to empower the federal govern- 
ment to put down disorder in the States ; Mr. Yates to make 
foreign born citizens eligible to the Presidency; Mr. Davis to 
establish a constitutional tribunal of which each State shall 
have one judge to be paid by the State, and not by the Govern- 
ment; Mr. Stewart to compel free schools in each State and 
territory : Mr. Sumner to limit the President to one term and 
abolish the Vice-Presidency ; Mr. Lawrence to choose electors 
by a different system ; Mr. Ingersoll to give Congress the pow- 
er of making United States notes legal tenders ; Mr. Julian to 
enact female suffrage ; Mr. Burdett to forbid States and corpo- 
rations levying taxes for any sectarian purpose ; Mr. Coburn to 
make federal officials elective by the people of the State or 
Territory where they shall reside ; Mr. Potter to stop the char- 
tering of private corporations by Congress ; Mr. Potter also to 

(227) 



228 AMENDMENTS PROPOSED TO THE CONSTITUTION. 

make the President's term six years ; Mr. Coghlan to stop the 
sale of public lands except to actual settlers (lost by §5 to 87) ; 
Mr. King to make amalgamation illegal and to separate the 
races in the public schools ; Mr. McNealy to stop import and 
excise duties and to raise revenue by direct taxation; Mr. 
Morgan to make naturalized citizens eligible for President and 
Vice-President (81 yeas, 65 nays, lost) ; Mr. Comingo to ad- 
mit no State which does not contain a full representative pop- 
ulation ; Mr. McCrary to elect Postmasters and make all offices 
hold for four years and be removable by the President only for 
bad morals ; Mr. Snapp to make judges of the Supreme Court 
non-eligible for the Presidency; Mr. Mclntyre to give the 
Supreme Court original and enlarged appellate jurisdiction ; 
Mr. Parker to make Senators and Members non-eligible for the 
Presidency; Mr. Hawley to make Senators elective by the 
people ; Mr. Jones to give territorial delegates all the rights of 
Congressmen and to enact female suffrage. 

In addition to all these proposed amendments, a natural 
religious association of which a judge of the Supreme Court is a 
member, wants "Almighty God and the Lord Jesus Christ" 
violently inserted into the preamble to the constitution "after 
the words, "We the people of the United States." It is ap- 
prehended that in this way we shall become immediately a 
Christian Government. 

The happiest accident since the close of the War has been 
the Credit' Mobilier exposure. It has tumbled some hollow 
effigies of reputation, and proved that eminent success cannot 
cure a lying tongue, nor ennoble sinister character. But, in the 
moral needs of a nation, the unworthy must go, and not the 
exposure, but the concealment, of their crimes is the sign of 
disease. It is better to see the purloiner and the pirate on the 
gibbet of public opinion, instead of blandly plying their craft 
in the security of eminence. 

About this period it would be timely for some of those old- 
fashioned sermons on the driving of peddlers out of the Tem- 
ple, — particularly the peddlers who sold doves, the soft and 



SENATORS ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE. 229 

cooing kind of chaps, who disguised the trade in the innocence 
of the commodity: sleek and harmless little Credit Mobilier. 

The exposure of thieves is a good sign. 

It is the first step to health, and its effects have been already 
extroradinary. The franking fraud has been abolished; the 
Steamship-Subsidy bill to Australia, — a mere grab in the name 
of a trade which sailing ships only can do with profit, — has 
failed ; the Goat Island plunder has been repudiated by the 
very Congress which had previously passed it; the Cotton-Tax 
Refunding bill has perished ; Pomeroy has been pitched out of 
the Senate ; Caldwell, Clayton, Pinchback, Carolina Patterson, 
and some others will go out, or the Senate itself will know the 
sentiment of this country by other than newspaper-leaders. 
Finally, Oliver P. Morton has advocated the abolition of the 
Electoral College, and — mirabile dictu! Mr. Harlan has pro- 
posed the election of Senators by the people. He knows how 
it is himself, since he got -$30,000 railway money to elect him- 
self. Out of the fullness of the conscience and the efficacy of 
exposure, the mouth speaketh ! 

In the Senate of the United States, Jan. 31, 1873, Mr. Harlan asked, and, 
by unanimous consent, obtained, leave to bring in the following joint reso- 
lution ; which was read twice and ordered to be printed : 

Joint Resolution Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the 
United States. 

Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States 
of America in Congress Assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring 
therein), That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the 
several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, 
which, when ratified by three fourths of said Legislatures, shall be valid as 
part of the Constitution, namely : 

ARTICLE XVI. 

Section 1. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two 
Senators from each State, chosen by the people of the several States for six 
years ; and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite 
for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature ; and, if 
vacancies happen by resignation, or otherwise, in the Senatorial represent- 
ation from any State, the Executive authority thereof shall issue writs of 
election to fill such vacancies. 



230 AMENDMENTS PROPOSED TO THE CONSTITUTION. 

It may appear impossible to secure a two-thirds vote in the 
Senate for the proposition of an amendment which will burn 
the ships behind many of the corsairs and conquistadores there. 
But knaves slouch along in the wake of upright people, even 
in the Senate, and vigorous agitation of the subject, and its 
espousal by the abler men of that body, will silence the tongue 
of him whose unworthiness will be admitted by the act of 
opposition. The Senate of the United States was originally 
designed to reflect the selected sentiment of the wisest electors 
in each State, — the Legislatures. It was supposed that the 
hearty emulation of the States would keep high, and apart 
from party management and momentary passion, the exalted 
offices of these censors upon more popular legislation ; that the 
length of the term of Senator would ordinarily survive the 
duration of a party ; and that a body of grave and reflecting 
men, unusually versed in affairs, would bridge over Adminis- 
trations and party periods, and, never expiring, prolong an 
aristocracy of intellect, experience, and calm demeanor. Such 
was the beautiful conception of the Senate. 

In the course of time, the Senate has come to be the chief 
object of political conspiracy, and in every State the Governor- 
ship is prostituted to obtain it, — men walking over their oaths 
and sense of Commonwealth duty to bound into, the Senate, 
and stay there two years longer than the President can keep 
his office. 

The voting constituency of a State like Pennsylvania is re- 
duced from hundreds of thousands to hundreds, in order that 
a man may spend a lifetime in the Senate, who could never be 
elected Governor, and against whose name a resolution of cen- 
sure and disgrace is recorded on the Journal of the House of 
Representatives. 

The Senate, in its present organization, is suggestive of the 
steady decline of its manhood and conduct. 

The presiding officer of the Senate, Schuyler Colfax, the 
Vice-President, has solicited an inquiry into his character on 
the charges of corruption and perjury, which were refused by 



HONORABLE SENATOES. 231 

the Senate on the ground that impeachment was the only 
method to reach him, and it was how too late to adopt that, 
because, although the presiding officer might have been inter- 
ested in jobbery for the whole period of his term, he was soon 
to retire to private life, after declinations too numerous to men- 
tion. And how could a man remember his Credit Mobilier 
stock who had so often forgotten to retire at the time he. prom- 
ised ? 

The predecessor of Schuyler Colfax in the Senate, B. F. 
Wade, had promised to divide the raiment of his country, had 
he been made President, amongst such people as E. B. Ward, 
John Conness, and other drovers. He missed the Presidency 
by the votes of Lyman Trumbull and others, and has since been 
riding oxen, in a congenial way, through the jobbing pastures 
of Santo Domingo. 

The successor of Schuyler Colfax, Henry Wilson, has just 
escaped the Credit Mobilier implication by such a close shave 
that we hope it will steady him up for the next four years, and 
that certain of the angels will have charge concerning him, 
lest at any time, while uttering a platitude, he dash his foot 
against a stone. 

The President of the caucus, and vice-presiding officer went 
about the city, saying that there is nothing in Caldwell's case 
requiring the Senate to take any action, — thereby exonerating 
bribery. He is an unblushing defender of every man who took 
the Credit Mobilier stock. 

The Executive clerk of the Senate is a carpet-bagger, for- 
merly a clergyman, who is a publisher of a journal in this city 
of which the Washington Herald spoke as follows last week : 
" How can we expect honesty in public life when a Senator 
(Harlan), the Executive Clerk of the Senate (Morris), and 
the Paymaster's Department of the Army (?) unite to publish 
a journal at the Capitol defending every exposed rascal of Con- 
gress." The paper thus spoken of is now defending Pomeroy, 
who, perhaps, has an interest in it. 

There are about twenty Senators who fill the full measure 



232 AMENDMENTS PROPOSED TO Tfi;3 CONSTITUTION. 

of their station, and these could be even more readily elected 
by the people than by the State Legislatures. Of these, four, 
and possibly five, are from New England, four from the Middle 
States, seven from the Western States, and five from the 
Southern States. The House of Representatives contains two- 
fold the average talent and character of the Senate. 

In the year 1862, John C. Breckinridge, Jesse D. Bright, 
and Trusten. Polk were expelled from the Senate ; but their 
offence of treason, then general with an entire section, exon- 
erates them from the more contemptible charges rife at this 
period. 

The Senators of Rome were forbidden to engage in commer- 
cial pursuits, and that great body kept its character for a long 
period, until Sylla, Caesar, and other ambitious captains made 
it an instrument ; and, at last, one of the Caldwells of that 
period, a certain Senator Didius Julianus, bought the Imperial 
crown for about two hundred pounds sterling per vote, or 6,250 
drachms. 

The life, antecedents, and reign of Didius Julianus present 
an opportunity for parallel readings. 

Mr. Julianus was a good trader, and his commercial word 
was good. For a business man, he was of the frankest nature. 
His checks, when he bought an office, were promptly paid, and, 
like men now-a-days, he thought it was of no consequence what 
the line of business was, provided you could get into it. 

• The Praetorian Guard, otherwise the Kansas Legislature, 
had cut off the head of Pertinax Ross, the Emperor, for voting 
not guilty on the trial of Andrew Johnson, Sulpicianus (or 
Sidney Clark) began to treat for the Imperial dignity, but he 
demanded the office by right of party fealty and performance, 
and said too little on the important subject of a quid pro quo. 
At this announcement, " His freedmen and his parasites," says 
one of the newspaper authorities of his time, " easily convinced 
Julianus that he deserved the throne, and earnestly conjured 
him to embrace so fortunate an opportunity." This picture 
does not seem to smack of antiquity, but to be a plain passage 
in Kansas politics. 



A SENATORIAL ALLEGORY. 233 

Didius Julianus was indulging himself in the luxury of the 
table when he heard that the purple was for sale. He took out 
his lead-pencil, and made a computation as to how much the 
prize would cost, and what the opportunities were for a trade 
in the office. He bid against Sulpicianus at the foot of the 
ramparts, — we had almost said in the town of Topeka ; and at 
$1,000 in gold per man,— a sum, considering the increase of 
money, not widely different from Topeka' s prices, — he knocked 
off the crown. 

He then made a speech couched in the Pomeroy vein. He 
expatiated on the freedom of his election, his own eminent vir- 
tues, and his full assurance of the affections of the Senate. 
The Senate voted him a golden statue, but, with that remark- 
able sagacity which only a business Senator can possess, Juli- 
anus remarked that " he preferred one of brass as more lasting; 
for he had always observed that the statues of former Emperors 
were soon, destroyed, and those of brass alone remained, not 
being worth destruction." If the above were signed " Gath," 
instead of Edward Gibbon, the loyal party press would go for 
it ; but the chief practical difference is, that the latter wrote 
about a nation destroyed by its corruption, which might have 
been arrested had it possessed such an historian, and been 
aroused by his depictions of those evil days. 

There was indignation throughout the Roman Empire, but 
the Senate alone, whose conspicuous station and ample posses- 
sions exacted the strictest caution, dissembled their sentiments, 
and met the affected civility of Julianus with smiles of compla- 
cency. This is a good piece of sculpture of a Senate to this 
day, — the difference being that Didius dealt with Conscript 
Fathers, and Caldwell with Bankscrip Fathers. 

The army, however, concluded to take Julianus in hand, par- 
ticularly after its General, Septimius Severus, — a native of 
Africa, and doubtless a progenitor of Senator Pinchback, — 
had offered every soldier X400 to investigate Julianus with a 
spear. Julianus, however, called on the Praatorian party, to 
which he had been truly loyal, to defend him in committee or 



234 AMENDMENTS PEOPOSED TO THE CONSTITUTION. 

otherwise, and sought to " negotiate" with his rapidly-advanc- 
ing enemy. But the Praetorians heard the long, dull roar of 
the whole empire, and abandoned their creation after his brief 
reign of sixty-six days. That Severus should have marched 
from the confines of Pannonia (or Kansas) so rapidly, is proof, 
says Gibbon, " of the goodness of the roads, and the indolent 
and subdued temper of the provinces." 

The dismayed Praetorians cut off the head of Julianus, and 
were in turn banished and dispensed with by the empire. 

This seems to be a good lesson all around. Julianus, how- 
ever, was spared the humiliation of buying a seat in the Senate 
from a set of negro field-hands, like Patterson, of South Caro- 
lina, or of buying a patent for it. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



SOME OP THE BUREAUX OF OUR GOVERNMENT VISITED — LIGHT 
SHED UPON THEIR MANAGEMENT AND CONTENTS. 

Some parts of the Federal Government are never noticed 
here, because they have not associated with politics, and, there- 
fore, never become the subject of party news. 

Few persons ever hear of the National Observatory, the only 
public building here which stands near our meridian of longi- 
tude, and where the computations are made by which American 
sailors grope their way over the main. Few know anything ot 
the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, one of those 
extraordinary enterprises of the Gallaudet family, where deaf 
mutes are educated for professions, and to be teachers of other 
institutions. The Coast Survey is also a lost institution to the 
great mass of Americans, although it is better known abroad 
than any bureau of our Government. 

| It is the nearest of all the public ateliers to the Capitol 
edifice — only one block. A small tin sign set up against the 
jamb of the open door of a very old brick residence, has been 
its only advertisement for forty years. This old residence is 
one of half a dozen stretched along old New Jersey Avenue 
and on the scarp of Capitol Hill, which are tenanted by the 
office employees of a service embracing the largest area of labor 
in the government. Some of the buildings are across the 
way ; some are in a newer, smaller row on the same Avenue ; 
one building is a fire-proof safe, big enough for a family to live 

(235) 



itiQ GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

in ; the main office is in Law's old block, a highly respectable, 
thread bare, Bleak House sort of pile, which is cracking and 
groaning through its hollow concavities more and more every 
year. 

If you have any business with the Coast Survey — and it is not 
to folks in general a " show" department — you might venture 
to peep into its office door some morning, and there you would see 
a bare vestibule, a couple of inhospitable naked rooms for clerks, 
and for the rest a couple of worn and creaking stairs, leading 
to former bed-chambers. Back passages, also uncarpeted, con- 
duct to some old and would-be stately saloons, where a few steel 
engraved plates of the coast surveyings hang, as well as photo- 
graphic pictures of the founders and Superintendents of this 
beneficent undertaking. 

As we wander around these grim and rheumatic old apart- 
ments, over the half-faded carpets, amongst the quaint patterns 
of furniture and plush in former woods, and modes of weaving, 
and feel the mouldering, dry smell of the rented rooms where 
science is driven by democracy, we may well experience a sensi- 
tiveness as to what a little chance the useful, the diligent, and 
the conscientious attain . amongst us, and how busy are the 
criticisms of ignorance, calling itself " practicability," upon 
matters beyond its ken. The meanest committee of Congress 
has a fire-proof parlor, walnut and leather furniture, a sumptuous 
clerk and a lackey. 

But here is the Coast Survey, suggested by Jefferson, begun 
by Gallatin, organized by Hassler, perfected by Bache, and 
recognized by every learned body in this world, — this institution 
may be said to exist by the oversight of politicians ; it scarcely 
knows where to lay its head ; it lives like the poor scholar, up 
back-attics, and in neglected dormitories ; it steadily refuses to 
be regulated by politicians, and it only gets its regular appro- 
priation because of the ignorance of the caucus Congressmen, 
who are afraid to be voted asses if they denounce it. 

One of the most interesting personages of the Coast Survey 
is Mathiot, the electrotyper, who has been at his business for 
the Government about a third of a century. 



GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 237 

He is a Marylander, a quiet, spectacled, grave man, below 
the medium size, and he discovered the art of separating the 
engraved plates of coast survey charts from the metallic impres- 
sions taken of them — these impressions being used to print 
from, while the original plate is deposited in the fire-proof 
magazine. This discovery has saved ours and other govern- 
ments tens of thousands of dollars, but it is needless to say that 
Mathiot never got any recompense, and perhaps little recogni- 
tion for it. He is one of those ancient, slow, dutiful men, such 
as grow up and ripen, and are happy under benignant govern- 
ments. Some years ago he went down the river on the memo- 
rable excursion which killed a part of Tyler's Cabinet, and 
when the gun called the " Peacemaker" burst, Mathiot heard 
the gunmakers discuss the causes. They agreed that all the 
vibrations of the metal were caught in the acute angle where 
the breech was pealed down to the barrel — tons of pressure 
concentrated upon a spot. Mathiot got to thinking this over, 
as it applied to the substance he should interpose between his 
plates. He had tried wax, and many other mediums, but the 
problem seemed to be something which should receive and 
deaden the whole force of electrotyping, — not make the plates 
cohere, nor yet deface the original plate. After much groping 
he hit upon alcohol and iodine. This, transferred by galvanism, 
makes a thin coating between the plate and the metal copy, of 
the scarcely conceivable thinness of 1,400 of the billionth part 
of an inch. Then, by filing off the edges of the two plates, the 
copy comes off absolutely perfect. Prior to that discovery the 
costly plates were crushed and defaced in the press, and were 
good for nothing after a few hundred impressions. But by the 
Mathiot process a dozen printing plates could be produced from 
one engraving. 

It is the pleasantest sight in this bureau, to see the plates 
separated, and the tin burnished silver faces of the large and 
delicate charts come perfect from their delicate embrace, every 
line, figure, fluting and hair clearly defined, and the microscope 
showing no difference whatever. They have not touched, yet 



238 GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

the)' have imparted and received the whole story. It makes 
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception credible. 

To reduce the original drawings of charts to plate and stan- 
dard size, the camera is used. The sheets are printed on a 
hand press, the ink being rolled over frequently. There is no 
line engraving in the world superior to these charts. 

By the establishment of the Coast Survey the sea is made as 
sure and as familiar as the land. Almost every port in the 
Union has derived benefit from this organization. 

A Judge of the Supreme Court was telling me, a few' days 
ago, about some inordinate fees which counsel had received, 
within his knowledge. For example : David Dudley Field re- 
ceived 1300,000 from the Erie Railroad. William M. Stewart 
was paid $25,000 cash by the Gould-Curry silver mine, and so 
many feet of the ore, which altogether netted him $200,000. 
Jeremiah S. Black received $60,000 from the New Alexander 
mine, and a few months ago he sued them for $75,000 in addi- 
tion, and received judgment. Wm. M. Evarts has been paid 
$25,000 for defending Andrew Johnson, and his annual income 
is $125,000. He recently charged $5,000 for one speech, 
which occupied eighty minutes. The Justice who gave this 
information decried the high charges which lawyers everywhere 
receive in one day, making no apology for extorting $100, 
where, ten years ago, $5 and $10 were deemed good fees. 

A few days ago I had the pleasure of passing through the 
document and folding-rooms of the Capitol, which are under 
the custody of the Doorkeeper of the House. If you under- 
stand by the Doorkeeper of Congress, a person who stands on 
guard at the entrance thereof, you greatly err ; for the door- 
keeper has more than one hundred employees, and is literally a 
person in authority, saying to one person go and he goeth, and 
to another come and he cometh. The chief subject of superin- 
tendence with the doorkeeper is that of the printed bills, acts, 
memorials, petitions, reports, etc., of Congress, which are filed, 
preserved, and distributed in a series of rooms called the docu- 
ment room, and he also has all the printed matter of Congress 



GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 239 

wrapped up and mailed, after it bas been franked. The Chief 
Doorkeeper's salary is $2,650, and his Chief of Folding Room 
and Chief of Document Room receive each $2,500. The fold- 
ing-rooms lie in the cellars and clefts of the old Capitol build- 
ing, and comprise twenty-six rooms, some of which are below 
the surface of the ground, and are packed with layers of books 
twelve deep, the fall of a pile of which would crush a man 
to death. About 260,000 copies of the Agricultural Report 
alone are printed every" year, and these will probably weigh two 
pounds a-piece, or 260 tons. Each member of Congress has 
about 1,000 copies of this book, for distribution, and all these 
copies are put up and warehoused in the folding-room, subject 
to the member's frank, and when they are to be mailed they 
are packed in strong canvas bags, of the Capacity of two bush- 
els of grain measure. Sometimes 200 of these heavy bags are 
sent of a single night to the Post-office, to take their turn on 
the much-abused mail train. The boys who put up speeches 
and books for the mail are paid by the quantity of work done, 
and good hands can make nearly $50 a month.. It is a busy 
scene in the depths of the old Capitol building, to see wagons 
come filled with documents, long rows of boys sealing envel- 
opes, and others working with twine, and the custodians and 
directors of the work are generally free to admit that there is 
much unnecessary printing done, and that many of the books 
printed are stored away and forgotten, in the vaults of the 
mighty labyrinth. 

•; The document-room occupies what was once the Post Office 
for the House of Representatives, and a part of the lobby and 
galleries of that celebrated old hall, now many years deserted 
for the new wing, where subsequent to the year 1818, the pop- 
ular body of the Legislature assembled under the Speakership 
of Henry Clay, James K. Polk, John Bell, Philip Barbour, 
Andrew Stevenson, Robert C. Winthrop, Howell Cobb, and 
Linn Boyd. Here upwards of two millions of copies of bills 
and documents are annually received, distributed, and filed, for 
nearly the whole of the vast business of Congress is done by 



24U GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

aid of printing,-— the bills, acts, etc., being on the desk for 
every member at the moment of debating them. The usual 
number of copies of a bill printed is 750, and, if five amend- 
ments should be proposed, this would make 3,750 copies. If, 
therefore, each Congress should pass or consider 1,000 bills, 
each having five amendments, there would be 15,000,000 
copies issued. About 20,000 copies of the laws of the United 
States are printed every year at a cost of several thousand dol- 
lars, and the sum of $689,000 was expended last year in all 
sorts of Congressional literature. The documents of Congress 
go back to the first Congress, and a manuscript index to them 
is kept, but the repository for them is neither fire-proof nor of 
sufficient capacity, so that they are in danger of combustion or 
hopeless confusion. The Capitol edifice is already too small 
for the multifarious offices and uses required of it, and we shall 
soon be compelled to meet the question of a general enlarge- 
ment of the whole affair or a relinquishment of much of tlie 
work which has been imposed upon the legislative body. 

We shall hare to expect differences of opinion on such ques- 
tions as concern the gravity and self-knowledge of the whole 
Federal Republic. 

Take this case : The Commissioner of the Land Office, 
Joseph Wilson, is a man of wide reading and wonderful indus- 
try, and every year he prepare* a very voluminous report upon 
the condition of the public domain, not only returning the 
statement of the new surveys, the quantity of land sold, and 
such technical tables as belong to his duty, but he also com- 
poses and throws together in an admirable way, the latest 
problems of empire and extension, the history of gold, and 
many miscellaneous statements of the highest interest. In 
addition to this he has handsomely measured and executed in 
his office, by accomplished German map-makers, such charts as 
will illustrate his report. One of these maps in particular, in- 
tended to show, upon Mercator's projection, the past, the pre- 
sent, and the prospective routes to, and possessions of, the 
Pacific, is entirely unique and admirable, and it is, perhaps, 
twelve feet square. 



GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 241 

The question at once arises in the mind of every Congress- 
man, " Shall we accept and print that report and have the ex- 
pensive maps appended to it engraved ?" 

Here are two arguments at once ; and where would you, if 
a Congressman, stand upon the question ? 

1. Pro. : It was good of the Commissioner to do so much 
good work, and he ought to be encouraged in it. He is justly 
proud of his valuable map, and it will do much good to scatter 
it broadcast with the report. The nation rejoices to see itself 
in the light of its rivals, and to see the century in the light of 
the past. Few officials care to do overwork, and Wilson's re- 
ports are as readable as they are important. 

2. Contra : The Commissioner's reports are too long, and 
undertake too much schoolmastership. His big map will cost 
$200,000 to engrave it. The Republic is not a high school, and 
a Land Commissioner is not a Professor of History. If we 
print this report it will be putting a premium on extra and un- 
necessary printing, and if we circulate the map the private 
map-makers will find their trade gone. 

Where do you stand on this question ? 

Yet, this is one of the innumerable topics coming up to re- 
quire to be voted upon, and this one was discussed last session 
in all varieties of ways. Charles Sumner thought the Federal 
State ought to waste no expense to understand and properly 
represent itself, both before its own citizens and the world. 
Mr. Anthony thought economy and a due restriction of Federal 
endeavors inclined us to reject the map. 

I think that I should have voted with Anthony and against 
Sumner,, and on this ground: Under our institutions the 
Government has no business to try to do too much for us. If 
it content itself with giving us a fair chance, the people of 
themselves will write treatises and engrave maps, particularly 
upon special topics. An international copyright law, which 
will cost the Government nothing, will at once raise authorship 
to a profession here, and out of authorship will come maps, facts, 
' excursions, discoveries, and books, all the more valuable that 
16 



242 GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

the people were rational enough to do them without law. Too 
much help at the centre makes helplessness in the extremities. 
Mr. Wilson's maps ought to be deposited in the Library of Con- 
gress, and any map-maker should be allowed to take copies of 
them at his own expense. Help the Library, Mr. Sumner ! 
and give us a copyright law, and national instruction from 
American sources will ensue. 

"Are you a revenue detective ? " said I to a man of my ac- 
quaintance. 

" No, not exactly. I had been studying up whiskey frauds, 
and I told Mr. Boutwell, who is an old friend of mine, that I 
believed that I could recover some millions of money lost dur- 
ing the years 1866, 186T, 1868." 

" You see," continued Mr. Martin, " that during those years 
of Johnson's administration the revenue derived from whiskey 
was only about $15,000,000 a year, although five times as 
much whiskey was distilled then as now, and although the tax, 
which is now 50 cents a gallon, was then $2 a gallon. Now, 
the revenue from whiskey obtained during the first year of 
Grant's administration has been $72,000,000, and I believe 
that $200,000,000 can be recovered from the distilleries- and 
the defaulting revenue officials at civil suit. My investigations 
have been confined to New York, where I am confident that I 
can recover $50,000,000." 

" What was the nature of those frauds ? " 

" It is my belief that in nine-tenths of the cases the govern- 
ment officials were the corrupters of the distillers. Those cor- 
rupt officials escaped summary expulsion by the operations of 
the Tenure-of-Office law, for, even when Johnson was willing to 
turn out a perjured collector or assessor, that willingness was 
interpreted by the Senate to be a political prejudice, and the 
rascal always kept his place by proving that he was an anti- 
Johnson man. The distillers have almost invariably admitted 
to me that they would have made more money, with less wear 
and tear of conscience, had they paid the whole tax and traded 
on the square " 



HOW REVENUE FRAUDS ARE COMMITTED. 243 

" Explain how the frauds were committed generally." 
" Well, the act of fraud was generally perpetrated in this 
manner : The law compels every distillery to have two receiv- 
ing tubs, into which the high wines or whiskey is run, and no 
liquor is to be run into those tubs after dark. The revenue 
officer is supposed to come to the distillery and watch the whis- 
key drawn from the tubs into barrels, at which time he takes- 
note of the number of gallons, and collects the tax. I have 
found distilleries of the largest capacity to return fifteen or 
twenty barrels a day, whereas a thousand, fifteen hundred, or 
two thousand barrels was probably the actual quantity manufac- 
tured. The fraud was, of course, perpetrated by collusion with 
the revenue officers, and in this way : An underground pipe 
extended from the bottom of the receiving tubs to a neighbor- 
ing building rented by the distiller and called a rectifying room. 
If the underground pipe was suspected or found to be awkward, 
some boards were loosened in the roof above, and a hose or 
pipe dropped into the whiskey, which was then pumped by a 
hand pump or a steam engine into the rectifying room, where 
it was secretly barreled. Now, we come to that part of the 
fraud by which it was made next to impossible to trace the 
illegal whiskey into the hands of the buyer. The distiller 
would go to a whiskey dealer or speculator and conclude a mock 
purchase from him of, say, two thousand barrels of whiskey. 
When the illegal whiskey from the rectifying room was sold 
and shipped, therefore, the distiller's books showed that he has 
purchased two thousand barrels of crude whiskey of a certain 
party, and rectified it merely ; while a detective, tracing up 
this whiskey, would find the books of the pseudo seller to cor- 
respond with those of the distiller ; everything, therefore 
seemed to be fair and square, and the deteciives were baffled. 
But, I am able to show, even where I cannot prove such a sale 
to have been a false one, that the government has a right to 
damages because, in almost every case this mock sale is marked 
down at a price below the tax, and this of itself the law sup- 
poses to be primd facie evidence of evasion." 



244 GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

" But, iMr. Martin, were there not door-keepers placed upon 
all the distilleries ? " 

" Certainly ; but they, like the gaugers, and all the rest up 
to collectors, were put upon salary, and found it convenient to 
slip away whenever necessary. I am prepared to show that as 
much as $15,000 a week was paid for months and months by 
some single distilleries, and from that down to $100 and $500 
a week, as blackmail. In many cases the first instalments of 
these enormous subsidies were paid as flat blackmail. Let me 
give you an example : A distiller, in one case which I investi- 
gated, was a matter-of-fact German, who was mentally incapa- 
ble of keeping himself informed upon the intricate system of 
laws affecting the distilleries, which were constantly being 
amended, repaired, or repealed by Congress. The character 
of legislation upon this subject is of itself a snare and a pitfall 
to the simple man. Well, my old German distiller, knowing 
little of some new turn in the law, was waited upon one day by 
a revenue officer, who told him that he was operating illegally, 
and that his place must be forthwith closed up. 

" ' Why,' says my simple-minded man, ' I had no intention 
of violating the regulations. If you close me up now you will 
ruin me. Here I have stored away an immense quantity of 
grain and other material. Is there no way of avoiding this 



seizure 



?' 



" ' I don't know,' says the revenue man, dubiously, ' I have 
only one set of orders. But you may keep on until to-morrow, 
when I will see the Collector. I won't close you up to-day.' 

" The next day back comes the revenue man, with a serious 
face, and says : 

" ' We have talked this matter over at the office, and we 
don't want to shut you up. We think that you are a good man, 
and that you mean to do right. I am instructed to say that 
$5,000 will fix this matter for the present.' 

" The distiller sees no way of escape. Time is precious to 
him. So he gives his check for five thousand dollars drawn to 
4 cash.' Thus begins a series of blackmailings, and there is no 



WHISKEY FRAUDS. 245 

going back, because the distiller's offence is a State's Prison 
one. At last weary of these repeated exactions, he agrees 
with the revenue officer to pay a fixed salary every week. 

" Take another case : A man has put up a distillery ; he 
finds the tax on whiskey is two dollars a gallon, and yet that 
he can buy it in the market for a dollar and a quarter, so he 
goes to the Collector. 

" ' I have spent a hundred thousand on my distillery,' he 
says, ' and I propose to go into the busines ; but, if I pay the 
tax and sell at the market rates, I do not see how I can make 
anything.' 

" Well,' answers the Collector, ; you must do as others do. 
I will send a man to you to-morrow, who will tell you how to 
act.' 

" The next day a man goes down and debauches the distiller 
with a statement of how others do. Thus a mighty net- work 
of villainy covers the whole trade. The distillers get to look 
upon the government officials as a class of blackmailers, and, 
as I have said^ at least a quarter of a million dollars has been 
lost to the Treasury. The distillers put upon their guard, effect 
an organization for mutual defense, and send their attorneys to 
Washington. In the pursuit of these discoveries, I have been 
opposed by the majority of the revenue officers in New York 
most bitterly. But I believe that the distillers, as a class, have 
been seduced into dishonesty, and, instead of sending them to 
jail, I am in favor of beginning a series of civil suits to recover 
the money lost during the years I have named. 

At this point Mr. Martin gathered himself up like a box-ter- 
rapin, and refused to make whiskey frauds any more mysterious. 

Washington City is the paradise of blank-book and bill-head 
makers. There are about half-a-dozen firms of this sort on 
Pennsylvania Avenue, which keep up an ornamental shop front, 
sell an envelope or a bottle of ink twice a week, and for the 
rest exist, or rather prosper, upon government contracts. The 
fattest take these worthies have is the Interior Department, 
whose Secretary makes his stationery contracts blind-folded. 



246 GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

A couple of ex-Commissioners of Patents seem to hare seconded 
him to the extent of ordering about ten thousand dollars in sta- 
tionery every month, and when* some time ago, Hon. Elisha 
Foote took charge of the office, and found that a thousand dol- 
lars a month would be an extravagant outlay, for this material, 
the combined cohorts of Browning, the stationers, the Patent 
agents, and the corrupt clerks of the Patent Office in collusion 
with the swindlers, charged home upon him. 

The subjectanatter of this collusion was the merry contract 
of Dempsey and O'Toole, a pair of gentlemen whose losses in 
the lost cause of J. Davis & Co., naturally made them objects 
of sympathy. They were awarded the contract for stationery 
and printing for the entire Interior Department, being the low- 
est bidders, according to the extraordinary description of bid- 
ding in vogue in Washington. This manner of bidding is 
something like this ; the stationer sees that among a large num- 
ber of articles there are needed gold pens, steel pens, expen- 
sive bound books, and envelopes. He makes a mental guess 
that not more than twenty-five gold pens will be needed by the 
whole department ; therefore, he offers to furnish these at seven 
cents each, the price of the same being, perhaps, three dollars each. 
But steel pens, he guesses, will be required to the amount of 
a hundred thousand ; the price of these he sets at five times 
their value. So with the few expensive ledgers. These he bids 
for at half their value, while he charges 300 per cent, profit upon 
common envelopes, the demand for which is enormous. By 
taking the average of an audacious bid like this it will be found 
in the aggregate lower than an honest contract ; for the depart- 
ment is unable to specify precisely the amount of each article 
it may wish to use, and the stationer expects to regulate 'this 
use by .collusion with parties inside the office. 

When Mr. Elisha Foote, the Commissioner of Patents, came 
to his office, he found that under this fraudulent contract he 
was burdened with useless stationery at enormous rates. Bond 
paper, worth two cents a sheet, charged eight cents, lay in the 
vaults of the Patent Office, enough to last twenty years. Nev- 



GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING. 247 

ertheless, the contractors demanded to furnish $24,000 worth 
more at the same extravagant rate, and claimed that a verbal 
contract to that effect had been made with A. M. Stout, ex 
Commissioner. Mr. Foote then, to test the honesty of the con- 
tract, ordered three hundred gold pens at the low rate annexed 
in the schedule ; at this the stationers raised the cry that 
Commissioner Foote was profligately buying gold pens for 
all his clerks. Small paper-covered entry-books, as big as a 
boy's " copy-book," worth twenty-five cents, were charged twen- 
ty-five dollars ! Fifty thousand strips of paste-board, three 
inches square, worth a mill apiece, were charged four cents 
apiece. A bill was exhibited, paid by one of Mr. Foote's prede- 
cessors, for twenty-eight thousand Patent Office heads and forms 
whereas only eleven thousand had been delivered. Interro- 
gated upon this, the stationers, appearing by Richard Jtlerrick, 
their counsel, alleged that they had been permitted to collect in 
advance and use the government funds in their business. Asked 
why the additional heads were not forthcoming, they accused 
Mr. Foote of taking away the printing plate. 

In brief, Mr. Foote refused to pay the bill of $24,000 without 
an investigation. This was ordered to take place before three 
patent-officers, B. F. James, of Illinois, Norris Peters, of Dela- 
ware, and E. "W. W. Griffm of the District of Columbia. This 
report is one of the most extraordinary pieces of white- washing 
in the history of Washington audacity. 

" The terms and conditions of the contract proper," says this 
commission, " exclude, necessarily, any inquiry into its char- 
acter or of the prices stipulated to be paid, unless fraud is 
shown." 

" And we are also of the opinion that bills presented to 
the Patent Office, accepted and paid, are also an estoppel on the 
part of the office as to the character of goods purchased and 
the prices paid therefor. Such purchases may be considered a 
matter of contract," etc., * * * " other matters 
that refer to the interests of the Office, in which Dempsey & 
O'Toole have not by any testimony been implicated, and which 



248 GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

in their nature should not be made public by the commission, 
will form the subject of a separate report." 

Meantime Secretary Browning, with unseemly haste, twice 
ordered Commissioner Foote to cash this bill. The Commis- 
sioner said he would go to jail first. Arrangements were then 
made to take him in front, flank, and rear, by threat, inuendo, 
and storm, and while the stout Old gentleman was wondering 
whether it was wise or possible to be honest in any public placje, 
Congress happily came to his relief, despite the objections of the 
Democrats, and forbade the bill to be paid without investiga- 
tion. 

This case is convincing that the whole business of contract- 
ing for stationery at Washington is unprincipled, that waste 
and profligacy of stationery is universal, and that the Patent 
Office is^full of people in collusion with outside scoundrels. 

Here comes the manuscript of the Secretary of State, and 
it is set up by sworn compositors, who dare not disclose it. 
Here most generally by observance, but not at present by 
breach, comes the first draft of the President's message, and 
all its accompanying papers. The long reports of Committees 
of Congress upon every conceivable question, are put into 
type here. In a word, no where else is any printing done for 
the general Government except the debates of Congress, which 
are* given out by contract, and the bonds and notes of the 
United States, which are printed in the Treasury Department. 
In this building even the money orders are printed and 
stamped, which go through the post-office like so many drafts. 
So are the lithographic plates prepared here to illustrate the 
large reports of explorations. 

In 1860, Cornelius Wendell, a celebrated typographical and 
political jobber, sold this establishment to the United States 
for 1135,000, and it is now the very largest printing office in 
the world. 

Among the public printers have been Gales and Seaton, 
Jonathan Elliott, Armstrong of Tennessee, Duff Green, Blair 
and Hives, Cornelius Wendell, and John D. Defrees, who has 
held the position since 1861. 



COST OP GOVERNMENT PRINTING. 249 

If there is anything that is pretty, it is to see a pretty girl 
On an Adams' press, feeding the monster so daintily. 

Here is a double row of them — Una and the lion reduced to 
machinery — presses and girls, the press looking up as if it 
would like to " chaw" the girl up, if it could only get loose 
from the floor, and the girl dropping a pair of black eyes into 
the cold heart of the press, all warm now with friction,, 1 
ashamed of its grimy mouth, burning to slip its belt and 
trample the paper to ribbons, and turn bondage into bliss. 
She, meantime, touches it with her little foot, thrills it with 
the gliding of her garment, poises over it on one white little 
finger the plain gold ring of some more Christian engagement, 
and black with jealousy, the press plunges into its slavery 
again, dishevelled with ink ; dripping varnish, cold and keen 
of teeth, the imp goes on, and the beautiful tyrant only 
smiles. 

The government printing-office involves a yearly expense of 
from one million and a-half dollars to over two millions, and 
this does not include the printing of the debates of Congress, 
which is done by contract at the Globe office, and which costs 
seven dollars a column to report them, and six dollars (I 
believe) a copy per session for the Globe, in which they are 
printed. 

The five successive stages of this building are busy in scenes 
and suggestions worthy of our attention, but the limits of 
your pages and your patience demand more substantial 
matter. 

Government printers get a trifle better prices than are paid 
elsewhere in the country. Steady work will give one $1500 
a year in this manufactory. The work girls get from nine to 
twelve dollars a week. The printers are almost always in 
excess, however. 

The great Bullock press cost $25,490. In one year new 
type added cost $18,804 ; printing ink, $19,717 ; coal, seven 
hundred tons ; new machinery, $5,000. 

In the bindery, four thousand Russian leather skins were 



250 GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

used, seven hundred and sixty packs of gold leaf (costing 
nearly $7,000), nearly five thousand dollars worth, of twine, 
and as much of glue. , 

The Executive Departments, with the Courts, required in 
186T about $757,000 worth of printing, while the House of 
Representatives ran up a bill of 1454,000, and the Senate 
$186,000. In addition to this, Acts of Congress warranted 
about $233,000 additional of work done for miscellaneous 
objects. Mr. Seward was a dainty hand with the types, and 
would have no bindings but the best. His bill in one year 
was about $32,000. The Supreme Courts and its satellite 
courts take less than half as much, or nearly $15,000. The. 
Congressional printer himself has a little bill of $700, but the 
Attorney-General is most modest of all, not reaching the 
figure of $600, nor does the new Department of Education 
consume more. The Agricultural Department, with its huge 
reports, 'passes $32,000. The monstrous appetite of the 
Treasury leads everything, with nearly $300,000, and the War 
Department follows it with $148,000. Next come the Post 
Office, Navy and Interior Departments, ranging from $78,000 
to $52,000. 

No enlightened Government in this age can do without 
public documents, but the whole system of distributing them 
should be changed. There are, perhaps, 3,000 odd counties 
in the United States. Let Government content itself with 
presenting a copy of every public -work to these, and let it sell 
the rest to the people at cost price. 

Of the agricultural report the extraordinary number of 
220,000 copies have been ordered for last year alone, at a cost 
of $180,000, or about eighty-five cents a copy. This cost is 
enough to pay the President, Vice-President, all the Cabinet 
officers, the Speaker of the House, and two-thirds of the first- 
class foreign ministers. In these reports there are 450,000 
pounds of paper, or 225 tons, enough to take 225 double-horse 
wagons to pull them. Now, put these 225 tons into the mail 
bags,. franked by Congressmen to corner grocers and gin-mill 



PATENT OFFICE. 251 

proprietors, and you get some notion of the reason why the 
Post-Office Department was not self-sustaining. 

One evil suggests and supports another. The swindles of 
the world are linked together, and the devil's forlorn expedients 
against the nation are " omnibussed." 

At this very moment there are 800,000 copies of the reports 
for various years lying in the vaults of the Patent Office build- 
ing, being the quantity annually printed in excess of the 
demands even of extravagance. These copies represent $80,-000 
of the people's money invested in waste paper, mildewing, 
rotting, the spoil of paste-rats and truss makers. The new 
Commissioner of Patents, Mr. Foote, when he took his seat 
some time ago, was not aware of this decaying mass of agri- 
cultural knowledge, manuring the ground instead of the yeoman 
intellect. The Patent Office is self-supporting, but that is no 
reason why it should print more books than it wants. The bill 
for engraving plates of models for the Patent Office last year, 
was $85,000. This is not mis-spent, but the excess of books 
was profligacy. 

The usual number of copies printed of any public document 
is 1,550, or about the average circulation of books printed by 
private publishing houses. Out of this number more than 
one-half are bound up, the rest being distributed in sheets by 
gift, mail, or otherwise. 

It is the current belief in Washington that the Patent Office 
department of the Government is not without corruption, but 
the agents and lawyers whose offices lie in its environs, and 
who are at the mercy of its examiners, are chary to speak, much 
of their bread and butter being bound up in the good- will of the 
directory. A partial awarding of patents, in the interest of 
money instead of merit, involves unjust millions of dollars, 
besides discouraging inventors, and making them doubt the 
righteousness of the Government. With a corrupt Patent Office, 
infinite law-suits arise, and yet it is probable that money is freely 
used within the precincts of that building, the claims of inven- 
tors who are willing to pay being considered in many gross cases 



252 GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

beyond those of the needy. So is there preference among the 
patent agents — those who solicit patents — some being under- 
stood to have the ears of the office at their disposal, others 
failing to secure patents which are afterwards willingly granted 
to cotemporaries. One of the oldest patent lawyers in the city 
said to me a few days ago : 

" The Patent Office has been more or less corrupt for fifteen 
years ! Yes, twenty ! When I used to be an anti-slavery man, 
in the years of Pierce and Buchanan, my clients were given to 
understand that they would be wise to apply for patents by 
some other agent. Recently, I have known the changing of 
the agent to get the patent promptly. The office ought to Jbe 
thoroughly overhauled. It has become so that examiners 
expect to serve a brief term and go out rich." 

Mrs. Foote, the wife of the Commissioner, is an inventor, 
whose patents have been profitable. She has invented a skate 
without straps, and several other things. 

Thaddeus Hyatt, once incarcerated in the District Jail for a 
complicity which he affected to have with John Brown's raid, 
is now a successful inventor, his patents for glass-lights in pave- 
ments netting him a very large income. 

About fifty thousand patents have been issued in the United 
States in thirty years, the receipts for which in fees have been 
nearly two millions and a half of dollars, while the British 
Government has granted only about forty thousand patents in 
2. r ,0 years. This shows the extraordinary mental activity of 
the American mind in mechanics, and the Patent Office build- 
ing, which has cost the government no money, is the best monu- 
ment to American shrewdness and suggestiveness in the world. 
Amongst nearly a hundred thousand models stored in the splen- 
did galleries of that institution, one may wander in hopeless 
bewilderment, feeling that every model, however small, is the 
work of some patient year, lifetime, and often of many life- 
times, so that the entire contribution, if achieved by one mind, 
would have extended far into a human conception of an eternity 
of labor. 



PATENT LAWYERS. 253 

The best: patent lawyers in the United States are Judge Cur- 
tis and Mr. Whiting of Boston, Messrs. Gafford and Keller of 
New York, George Harding of Philadelphia, and Mr. Latrobe 
of Baltimore. 

The most succesful firm of patent agents is represented by 
the newspaper called the Scientific American, which began 
upwards of twenty-two years ago. One of its partners is one 
of the ancient enemies of Bennett, who classified them as " Old 
Moses Beach and those other sons of Beaches," " proprietors 
of the New York Sun. The other partners are Munn and 
Wales. Their income is fifty thousand dollars a year to each 
partner, and they obtain one-third of all the patents issued, 
which are chiefly, however, what are classified as " cheap pat- 
ents," on small and simple inventions. The Scientific Amer- 
ican was started by an inventor, Rufus Porter, who sold out to 
the present owners. They refused to insert in it the cards of 
other patent agents, and it being the only paper of its class, 
the inventors at large transact their business through its pro- 
prietors. It was lately edited by Mr. McFarland, and under 
his management was altogether the best paper for inventors in 
the world. The Commissioners of Patents include some good 
names, chief of whom was Attorney General Holt, others being 
Ellsworth and Bishop of Connecticut, Burke of New Hamp- 
shire, Ewbank of New York, Hooper of "Vermont, Mason of 
Iowa, and Theaker of Ohio. 

The Patent Office building is generally adjudged to be the 
most imposing of all the national edifices of the Capital. To 
my mind the Post Office is a better adaptation. The former 
was the work of the present architect of the Capital, Edward 
Clark, and its three porticoes cost $75,000 apiece. The four 
grand galleries, or model rooms, are unlike and magnificent. 
It is related here that inventors who spend many years among 
these models commonly go crazy. 

These divers operations, possessing little affinity, are all to 
be transacted by one head. The Bureau of Pensions dispenses 
nearly nineteen millions of dollars a year ; the Land Office gives 



254 GOVERNMENT BUREAUX. 

away from seven to ten millions of acres of land ; three hun- 
dred thousand Indians are dealt with by the Indian Bureau ; 
seventeen thousand patents are applied for to the Commission- 
er ; all the Pacific railways are superintended and subsidized ; 
the public buildings and property in the United States in the 
District of Columbia and all the territories are administered ; 
two millions of dollars are paid to the United States Courts ; 
the whole of this immense and various business is transacted 
by one man. The Secretaryship of the Interior is therefore 
one of the very strongest positions in the government. So 
manifold became its duties that sometime ago the Agricultu- 
ral Bureau was endowed with a special head, reporting directly 
to Congress, and moved out of the o'ercrowded Patent Office. 
Now the Indian Bureau demands to be also brought nearer to the 
executive head of the Government, or made independent, so 
that its Commissioner can have his legitimate influence with 
Congress. The Patent Office building is packed with Clerks, 
who also occupy the whole or parts of adjacent buildings, and 
it is demanded that a Department of the Interior be built on 
the Judiciary square, in the rear of the city hall, with the earn- 
ings of the Patent Office. 



CHAPTEE XX. 



CELEBRATED SCANDALS OP OUR TIME. 

The war of the rebellion was attended with the demoraliza- 
tion usual to wars, and the extent of the disorder was propor- 
tionate to the area and cost of the war. A portion of the State 
legislatures had been corrupt for fifteen years prior to the re- 
bellion. The corruptions in New York State and Pennsylvania 
had long attracted the serious consideration of patriotic people, 
and were ascribed to the patronage of the State works, railroads, 
canals, which being commonwealth enterprises, got to be the 
spoils of party. In Pennsylvania a coalition between private 
capitalists and reformers took the canals and railways out of 
the hands of the State, and there grew up in turn powerful 
corporate interests which were constantly breaking the law, 
and seeking new concessions. At the head of these was the 
great Pennsylvania Company which preferred to purchase leg- 
islation rather than to persuade it, because it was not the desire 
of this company that there should be any general discussion of 
railroad ethics. Such discussion might have resulted in enlarg- 
ing the charities and educating the people in political economy 
to the extent of dangerous concessions to rival companies. 
The State of Pennsylvania, stretching across the Union from 
tide water to the lakes, was a perpetual barrier between the 
population of the interior, and the great sea-ports and man- 
ufacturing districts of the East ; it was the policy of the Penn- 
sylvania railroad from the day of its consolidation, to inculcate 

(255) 



256 CELEBEATED SCANDALS. 

a selfish policy amongst the citizens of the State, and hence the 
■ press and the legislature were subsidized almost from the out- 
set. The corporations grew in time to be the waste of the 
Commonwealth, and the morals and intellect of the State were 
corrupted, while at the same time the natural advantages of 
Pennsylvania gave it a career of prosperity which was adroitly 
made to appear the result of the great monopoly. 

New York State took another course ; it has never surren- 
dered the public works and canals, although many ardent 
reformers like Horace Greeley have argued that political morals 
would be improved at the State Capital by leaving these works 
to individuals, and getting rid of temptation. New Tork con- 
tains also two belt lines of rail across her territory, which have 
neutralized each other at the State Legislature. Thus corrup- 
tion in the Empire State has thriven almost wholly upon the 
spoils of the metropolis, and in a less degree upon the canals. 

The State of New Jersey received a different treatment from 
its great railroad corporations; the policy of the New Jersey 
railroad was neighborly, provincial, and accommodating. But 
corruption upon a wholesale plan was not indigenous there, 
but was imported from the two great States over the borders. 
It was not until the war was done that such scandals ensued, 
as the removal of the Erie Office from New York to Jersey 
City, and the extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad purchase 
and monopoly over the Jersey lines. It is necessary to instance 
these railways and public works as the first and general cor- 
rupters of the three great Middle States. 

Under the old condition of things, when the State Legisla- 
ture had final and general jurisdiction over matters of trans- 
portation, investment, barter, &c, there was an abiding tempta- 
tion to under-reach the State Legislatures, and capitalists in 
New England and the populous towns of the East believed 
corruption to be a cheaper and surer way, than to wait for the 
enlightment of public opinion. Hence a set of dexterous attor- 
neys, solicitors, and lobby-men grew up around the State Capi- 
tols, ready to be hired to buy a bank charter, procure some 



CORRUPTION CENTERING AT WASHINGTON. 257 

reduction of taxation, some enlarged power over debtors, or 
some act of incorporation which the narrow spirit of the Legisla- 
ture would not accord, by merely frank and ingenuous entreaty. 

It is to be observed that while the Federal Government took 
enlarged power during the contest, none of the central States 
of the Union grew a particle more tolerant. Pennsylvania 
and New Jersey were fastened closer in the embrace of one 
interest, while the great battle for liberalization went on through- 
out the South. 

The influences which existed in a partially organized state at 
Boston, Albany, and Harrisburg, at the outbreak of the Rebel- 
lion, were speedily mustered at Washington City, and a simulta- 
neous attack was made upon the virtue of every Department 
of the Government. Under the color of ridding the Depart- 
ments of disloyal clerks, a wholly new set of officials, greatly 
enlarged as to numbers, were put in the public Departments, and 
in many cases the influences which secured the appointment, 
designed to use the clerk. The dimensions of the war and its 
suddenness, presented such a market for supplies, and gave so 
little time to bargain about rates or qualites, that every manu- 
facturing producer and importer in the country was brought into 
intimate relations with the Government, and recognized a chance 
for instant riches, such as the previous history of the country 
had never permitted. 

The currency of the country was at once enormously expan- 
ded, and the rate of duties raised higher than the most sanguine 
dreams of the Protection school. Thenceforward for four years, 
the interior history of legislation and administration presented 
a scene of selfishness hardly ever paralleled in Christian society, 
but concealed from the people by the splendor and heroism of 
the military movements and mechanical enterprises on the 
surface. Every department of business was enormously expan- 
ded ; every municipality undertook a lavish system of local 
improvements ; the frontier States and Territories developed a 
desperate class of land-grabbers and railway incorporators, 
who had formerly been sutlers or teamsters on the plains. And 
17 



258 * CELEBKATED SCANDALS. 

of course such feverish conditions in society could not fail to 
put directly into Congress representatives of schemes, interests 
and mercantile apprehensions, instead of high-minded, indi- 
vidual, patriotic men. 

The morals of the country in other respects had undergone 
deterioration. A sentimentality usurped the place of discreet 
and orthodox common-sense. So much had been said and sung 
about freedom in the abstract, that the women had got to ranting 
for a suffrage of their own, the workmen for a contract to which 
there should be but one side, the religious people for an etymo- 
logical God in the Constitution, and the temperance people for 
a physical and compulsory diet of cold water. It very often 
happened that the sentimentalist and the thief took the same 
personality, and hence an enormous body of men have been 
developed by the war who will never forgive treason, and never 
stop robbing their country. There can be no doubt that the 
general happiness of the American citizen, has been enormously 
enhanced and equalized by the suppression of slavery, but it is 
time that the peens over the great victory be hushed, in order 
that we may review our social and political condition, and sepa- 
rate the loyalist from the hypocrite, the unionist from the pirate. 

There is no way in our country to change the direction of 
affairs except by public opinion expressed at the ballot box. 
But with politicians since the war, parties have lost their tradi- 
tions and faded into each other. Nobody in power is interested 
to produce a change of things, neither that Democratic Con- 
gressman who is sure of his seat from some rutted constituency, 
nor that aspirant for greater honors in the Republican party, 
whose best hold is that he has already, and who may be worked 
up by the force of the organization to some pinnacle of honor 
he could never attain by himself. The. issues presented by the 
people are far beyond the compass of such legislators as we have 
to direct them. Matters of wages, contracts, transportation, 
the reduction of corporations to decent behavior, the suppres- 
sion of excesses by the majority, the matter of the currency 
and the tariff, none of these things can be dealt with dispas- 



OAKES AMES A TYPE. 259 

sionately and harmoniously, by a Congress of which the constit- 
uency and not the country is the unit. The entire adminis- 
tration of the Republic has come to be internal, and having no 
foreign policy, and there are no opportunities for the public 
mind to be segregated and directed toward a common object. 
Hence Congress has ceased to be a reasoning parliament, but 
is rather a market-house, where the desires and products of 
nearly three hundred Congressional districts are satisfied, 
exchanged, and sold. With such selfishness in the one ruling 
body of the country, — a selfishness not to be charged to the 
Congressman wholly, but to the interests of which he is the 
attorney, and which sent him to Washington — it is almost idle 
to make personal accusations, or select individual culprits for 
exposure. 

Mr. Oakes Ames is typical of his constituency, and there is 
probably no manufacturer in it who would not have adopted his 
example, with the same chance and the same talents. Cor- 
relatively men like Ames who are making too good a thing of 
a national opportunity, will have vampires like James Brooks, 
runners like Jim Wilson, protege's like Colfax, and rivals like 
McComb. Something is wanted to give semblance, reality, 
manhood, and purpose to the general State, before we can have, 
in the large sense, statesmen. A market-house of constituen- 
cies, preying upon each other, comes far short of being a 
Government. Some such spasmodic uprising of the people, as 
was witnessed in 1861, is very inspiring to the eye and the 
mind, but if repeated with the same profligacy and dishonesty, 
and with the same following demoralization, the cost will be 
greater than the conquest. 

Amongst the propositions which have been broached to bring 
order and policy out of Congress, is that of giving the heads of 
Departments the privileges of Congressmen. This proposition 
was seriously made by the Hon. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, in 
1861. It has been revived in our day by thinkers and writers 
in the public press and on the rostrum. It is contended that 
the heads of Departments, if required to appear in public de- 



260 CELEBRATED SCANDALS. / 

bate, would be men of increased statue, of enlarged responsibil- 
ity, of a unified policy, and would give national direction and 
daily intelligibility to affairs, thus throwing into comparative 
retirement the capacity of the constituency which has lost asso- 
ciation with the State government, and merely preys upon the 
general Treasury and the aggregate taxpayer. 

It is certain that we must cease to hold the Congressman 
responsible for forgetting the dignity of his place, and the repu- 
tation of the country, when we merely thrust him forward as 
we do to pull our chestnuts out of the fire on the altar. Dur- 
ing the war a vigorous minority in the Republican party gave 
a national policy to Congress, by resolving to carry the 
measures of emancipation and universal suffrage. Since the 
war there has been no policy, except to confirm these advan- 
tages. Hence a scramble for franchises, lands, subsidies, and 
points of tariff and taxation, has marked nearly the whole of 
our legislation since 1866. The lobbyist has come to be as 
legitimate and as much respected as the Congressman, for 
their missions are identical. Debate is regarded as superflu- 
ous, nearly the whole session is devoted to private bills, and 
matters affecting the constituency, and the general appropri-. 
ation bills are crowded into a few days before adjournment.' 
Congress does not feel qualified to punish anybody for bribery, 
nor to protect its own privileges, nor to find a verdict upon a 
criminal case squarely presented to it. The power of .the 
National Constituency is confined to casting a vote once in four 
years for President and Vice-President, and very frequently the 
lateral issues are such that there can be scarcely a contest. 
Corruption appears to be prevalent, and to go high-handed. 
The capitalist casts his vote With nothing but his investment in 
his mind, and the laborer with nothing but his wages in view. 
There is a geographical nation and a party. A political nation, 
with well defined general objects, and the spirit of honest 
loyalty, one searches for in vain amidst the peculating depart- 
ments and the heterogenous Congress at Washington. The 
greater issues of the country lie along the lines of highway, 



JUDGE HOAR. 261 

and the United States cannot collect its own taxes from the 
railroad companies. Hence, although the war settled the 
question ol a geographical Union and the basis of suffrage, it is 
without the power to correct internal evils or to command 
dignity. 

Let us look at some instances ot public morals, as we find 
them : First, observe how the Attorney-General was driven out 
of his place by a politician. 

Judge Hoar probably lost his place through his independ- 
ence, and his indisposition to be twitted by politicians. I will 
give you an instance of Hoar's way of offending these gen- 
try : 

Enter to Judge Hoar's office a long-haired, tawny, lathy 
Congressman, from the State of Sadducee. Congressman dis- 
poses himself for a grand Indian council, and is amazed to ob- 
serve the fearless temerity of Judge Hoar, looking him 
through and through with those Presbyterian-blue eyes. 

Lest I might give offense, I will say that Presbyterian-blue is 
a very sincere, honest, dauntless blue, and — what is ot more 
consequence in an argument of this kind, — I am a Presbyterian 
myself. 

" The Administration," says the long haired Sadducee, 
" ought to take care of its friends, and turn out its enemies. 
All successful Administrations take care of their enemies by 
being very malignant to them." 

" May I ask," says Judge Hoar, in a voice which half an- 
swers its own question, " What you mean by the Administra- 
tion ?" 

" I want to know," says the other, in the vernacular of a man 
taught to talk to a caucus, " who runs the President's ma- 
chine ?" 

" What is the President's machine ?" says the Presbyterian- 
blue eyes, with John Calvin and Theodore Beza both in them. 
" I cannot speak in that way. If you mean who takes care of 
the business of the Executive, General Grant and his Secre- 
taries do that." 



262 ' CELEBRATED SCANDALS. 

" Then," says the thickly-skinned Sadducee, " they ought to 
take care of their friends, and not put them out of office." 

" I infer, from what you say of friendship," says the Attor- 
ney, " that it will come down directly to some one friend." 

" The Administration ought to take the advice of its friends. 
It ought to confer with its friends. It ought not to do things 
to wound its friends without conferring with its friends." 

" Oh !" says the Attorney blandly, " there are two friends in 
this case, you and the man you come to see about. Now, if 
advice would save this Administration, it is quite safe. I 
spend half my time every day hearing just such advice as you 
are giving me. Please be direct, and give your particular ad- 
vice about this one friend, that I see we are coming to." 

The Congressman, intensely irate, then tells about a man 
who has just been turned out of office, and another man put in 
his seat. The second man, of course, was not a friend of the 
Administration. The first man was. He was a constituent of 
Mr. Sadducee. 

" I can tell you all about that case," said Judge Hoar, " The 
man turned out had been indicted for theft and found guilty. 
The Administration was, at that moment, a little select about 
its friends. Have you any further advice to give, Mr. ?" 

Now, Judge Hoar has been fretted and pushed out of office 
by just such spiteful enemies as that Congressman. 

Another flagrant case of crime against the dignity of the 
United States was that of John C. Fremont and the El Paso 
Railroad. This case, in a nutshell, is that of a private citizen 
taking the bonds of a railroad to France, and advertising them 
there as endorsed by the American Government. 

May 17, 1869, there was laid upon the desks of the Pacific 
Railroad Committee a book with the following title : " The 
Trans-Continental, Memphis, El Paso and Pacific Railroad 
Company : How the Money was obtained in France under False 
Pretences, and How it was Squandered." This book contains 
the affidavit of Stephen Sarter, a stockholder in the city of 
Paris, but whom Fremont's attorneys allege to be a black- 



CELEBRATED SCANDALS. 263 

mailer and a rogue — who charges that he bought of Fremont's 
company 148 first mortgage land-grant bonds, paying for the 
same $116,430 in gold, which he afterward took back to the 
company, and demanded repayment, on the ground that they 
were worthless and sold under false pretences, but that the 
company " wholly refused " them. Sarter then proceeds to 
give the following account of Fremont's doings : 

" In the same year, 1869, Emanuel Lissignol was the agent 
and advertising agent of the Executive Committee in Paris, 
and Frederic Probst its agent and banker. These, with 
Fremont, issued $10,000,000 of first mortgage bonds in 1869, 
at $1,000 each, with interest at 6 per cent., payable in gold, 
all secured by a mortgage on 8,000,000 acres of Texas land. 
All the bonds were sent to Paris, and a spacious office was 
opened at No. 51 Chaussee d'Antin." 

"During the Summer of 1869, and between the months of 
April and September, these offices consisted of a suite of 
rooms fitted up and furnished in a costly and extravagant 
manner ; one of the rooms in the suite was devoted to the 
storing and gratuitous distribution of a pamphlet and map, 
written and compiled by 'Lissignol. Between the months of 
June and September, 1869, the defendants, Fremont and 
Daniel, his engineer, were living in Paris, and they used said 
office as their own, and frequently, if not constantly, were 
there during business hours, and were conferring and in con- 
sultation with Probst and Lissignol, who were the managers 
of said offices, and constantly there during business hours of 
each day ; all of which statements contained in this paragraph 
are within the personal knowledge of deponent." 

Sarter's affidavit then goes on to say what the pamphlet of 
Lissignol alleged about Fremont's railroad property : 

First. That the Memphis, El Paso, and Pacific Railroad 
Company, had purchased and was the owner of a line of 
railway extending from Memphis, Term., to Little Rock, Ark., 
and from Little, Rock to Texarkana, on the eastern border of 
Texas, with full title, power and authority to and over the 



264 CELEBRATED SCANDALS. 

railway, and all its property and franchises ; that said railway 
was then built and completely finished. * 

Second. That the Memphis, El Paso, and Pacific Railroad 
Company had purchased and was the owner of the railway 
extending from Memphis, via Knoxville, to Richmond and 
Norfolk, being 1,550 kilometres, or about one thousand miles 
in length. 

Third. That the Congress of the United States had, in 
March, 1869, passed an act whereby the United States had 
guaranteed the payment of 6 per cent, interest on the construc- 
tion bonds of the company to the amount of $30,000 a mile, 
and also had guaranteed the repayment of the bonds by the 
company at their maturity, to wit : at the end of .fifty years. 

Fourth. That the company had a good, perfect, and abso- 
lute title to more than eight millions oi acres of the most 
fertile lands in the State of Texas, by virtue of concession and 
grants from the Legislature of the State, with full power to 
mortgage the same, and that such lands were then worth, at 
the lowest price, not less than fourteen dollars an acre ; and 
that should these lands ever revert to the State of Texas, by 
reason of any lailure of the company to fulfil its engagements, 
the mortgage by the company remained in full force and 
obligation, and was a valid lien on said lands in whatsoever 
hands the said lands might thereafter come. 

Sarter also says, that a copy of the map issued is in his 
possession, and represents the lines of railway above men- 
tioned, namely : the line of the alleged company from Texar- 
kana to San Diego and San Francisco, from Memphis to Little 
Rock and Texarkana, and from Memphis to Richmond and 
Norfolk ; that the last two lines are laid down in unbroken 
red lines, with a marginal reference thereto, as follows, 
namely : " Railways belonging to the company, trans-Conti- 
nental, Memphis, Pacific, and in running order." Sarter 
further says he has been informed by the officers of the com- 
pany, and verily believes that the cost of printing and circulat- 
ing the map and pamphlet, and of the advertisements in the 



CELEBRATED SCANDALS. £65 

newspapers, was about one million of francs in gold, or about 
two hundred thousand dollars. 

Sarter goes on to say that Fremont paid Probst $200,000 
for this very advertising, which was upon a style that Helta- 
bold, Swain, Ayer, Bonner, or Phalon were excelled, frequently 
taking up a whole page of a paper like If Independence Beige 
or the Steele. 

How the bonds got on the French Stock Exchange. Baron 
G. Boileau, Fremont's brother-in-law, had been French Consul 
General in New York, and it is alleged that he received his 
$150,000 for testifying to the French Minister of Finance that 
Fremont's road was what it was represented to be. To spur 
up this minister, and persuade him to permit the Fremont 
bonds to quotation upon the French Stock Exchange, it was 
held out that Koechlin & Co., and other French builders and 
rail-makers, were ready to take the bonds for engines and 
iron. Probst, the broker, wrote thus shrewdly : 

" A prompt solution to my application (to put the bonds on 
the market) is urgent, because if the French contracts should 
be forfeited, the instructions of the company would compel me 
to make new contracts in Germany. All my past efforts to 
induce the Americans to take their supplies on the French 
iron market would become useless, and I doubt that, after so 
notorious a failure, other American companies would not be 
disposed to give their orders for materials in France. 

" Your Excellency will, probably, understand how important 
it is for the French metallurgy not to miss the single occasion 
that, up to this time, has offered to our iron the United States 
market. I am confident that you will grant me your good-will 
out of regard for a so considerable national interest." 

It has since been ascertained, says Sarter, that neither 
Koechlin & Co., nor any other manufacturer, had agreed to 
take bonds in payment, and nothing but sham contracts had 
been submitted to the French Minister. 

Sarter further says of the iron ordered in Europe, that about 
4,000 tons have arrived in New Orleans, and have been 



268 CELEBRATED SCANDALS. 

attached by the creditors of the Memphis and El Paso Company. 
None of the engines have been shipped to this country. 

The offices of the company in New York were closed under 
pretext of their removal to Washington, where they cannot be ' 
found, and where the officers of the company do not reside. 

For this flagrant abuse of its dignity, and the bringing of 
its credit into contempt in foreign money markets, the United 
States Government never took action of any sort against 
Fremont and his confederates. On the contrary, Fremont 
endeavored to have the American Minister at Paris removed 
for certifying in aid of a French journalist whom the con- 
federates had sued for libel that the United States had never 
guaranteed the bonds of the road. Senator Howard of Michi- 
gan made a series of attacks upon Fremont in the Senate, and 
it was alleged that he ceased only when he had been " seen" 
fby the attorneys of the road. The French Government was no 
I respecter of persons, and in the Spring of 1873 it condemned 
1 Fremont, his brother-in-law the Baron Bolleau, and the brokers 
in the transaction to terms of imprisonment at hard labor. 
Fremont kept out of France, and is still at large. The rolling 
stock and iron he had purchased were seized for debt at New 
Orleans, and finally the road fell into the hands of Tom Scott, 
while the poor French people who had invested in the fraudulent 
bonds to the amount of millions, lost their money, and with 
it respect for the American credit. The same performance 
has been repeated by other railway speculators, none of whom 
have been in any manner molested by the United States courts. 

Another scandal of an atrocious character happened at the 
opening of the Vienna Exhibition in the year 1878. Congress 
voted 1200,000 to arrange the American Department of the 
exhibition, and forward the contributions from American 
producers and manufacturers. A large number of honorary 
commissioners were named by the President, but before the 
exhibition opened it was discovered that several of these had 
purchased their places : some for the honor of an official -posi- 
tion, and others to peculate, blackmail, and rob the inventors. 
Our Minister at Vienna, and our Commissioner-in-Chicf, got 



ALASKA FUR SEAL JOB. 267 

into a quarrel, and the whole list was suspended by telegraph, 
to the scandal of civilization. 

One of the roads above referred to, whose bonds had been 
thrown out of the foreign markets, is that leading from 
Northern California to the Columbia River, of which the 
presiding genius is Ben. Holliday, formerly a trader and team- 
ster between Missouri and Salt Lake. Whatever his credit 
might have been in the European markets, it was sufficient for 
a very respectable class of Congressmen. 

At a dinner at Welcker's, given. about that time, Holliday \ 
celebrated himself. After they had all drunk Ben's liquor and j 
eaten his terrapin, Roscoe Conkling arose, glass in hand, and 
said that he had a great responsibility to fulfil : that he drank 
to the noble man who had built railroads and run vessels on 
the Pacific Coast, whom New York claimed as one of her 
splendid productions. After Conkling came Kelley, the great 
heavy Senator from Oregon, who said the State of Oregon 
would not permit New York to claim such a magnificent 
production as Holliday, but that he was all Oregonian, and 
heard no sound save his own dashing. Next came Beck of 
Kentucky, who said that New York and Oregon should not 
take from grand old Kentucky the ownership of Ben. Holliday, 
for there he was born, and belonged in honor, — all this mis- 
erable toadyism over a speculator who was in Washington City 
giving dinners to get a subsidy for his imperiled railroad, 
and who had no conception of the private rights of anybody 
standing in his way, but would eat up individuals, corporations, 
and legislatures ! 

No case before the Departments and Congress has made 
more discussion than that of the lease of the Alaska Fur-Seal 
Islands. About 1869, an association of young gentlemen ob- 
tained from the Government, under the provision of an act of 
Congress passed in their favor, the right to take all the seals, 
up to a certain limitation, from the islands of St. George and 
St. Paul, — paying so much per annum for the lease. The most 
prominent person in this company is General Miller, who lost 



268 CELEBRATED SCANDALS. 

an eye in one of Grant's campaigns, and was afterward Col- 
lector of the Port of San Francisco. The Eastern agent is a 
Mr. Hutchinson, one of the singing family of Hutchinson Broth- 
ers of New England, and a shrewd, amiable, and dexterous 
lawyer and negociante. I am told that when General Rous- 
seau was sent up to Sitka and the Russian waters, to take pos- 
session of whatever he found there, after the Russian evacua- 
tion, he gave the hint to some of his triends, who quietly 
repaired overland, by different routes, met him at San Fran- 
cisco, and arrived at Sitka with the money in hand to make 
purchases. Hutchinson, for the firm of Cole, Miller, Hutchin- 
son & Co., instantly concluded a bargain for the store-houses,, 
seal-gear, and sent vessels which constituted a part of the fran- 
chise of the Russian American Company ; and, with this pur- 
chase, there fell to him, besides, some sort of an unexpired 
lease of the fur-seal islands themselves. Now, on the same 
expedition, certain San Francisco capitalists had ensconced 
themselves, chief of whom were the proprietors of the ice-mo- 
nopoly of San Francisco — the ice used at that time on our 
Pacific Coast coming exclusively from one spot in Russian 
America. As the ice people and their camp-followers were 
generally Hebrews, and disposed to look twice at their money, 
before they spent it, they lost the only object worth acquiring 
there — possession of the fur-seal franchises and equipments. 
Of course, two lobbies were instantly formed — the Ins^and the 
Outs — and agents were sent to Washington, who deported them- 
selves as agents generally do here, acting up to their prettiest. 
It was soon apparent that Hutchinson had more genius than 
his opponents, in diplomacy as well as business ; and, although 
Secretary Boutwell, acting from that peculiar original obstinacy 
for which he is noted, cast his influence against the Miller and 
Hutchinson crowd, yet Congress, after investigation in commit- 
tee, unhesitatingly confirmed the original patentees. Under 
the terms of this act, Mr. Boutwell was compelled to give a 
lease to Miller & Co., which he did with a very bad grace. You 
know very well how those squabbles over spoils are conducted. 



THE M'GAERAHAN CLAIM. 269 

Anonymous letters are written to newspapers and reviews ; 
lawyers get in with organs of influence and public men ; pam- 
phlets are put forth, full of affidavits from people far off as 
Kamschatka ; and, if the sorehead party do not succeed in 
ousting their opponents, they generally expect to be bought 
over in order to have the quarrel stopped. Does not this case, 
and the utter impossibility of computing the right or wrong 
of it, show that the National Congress, meeting on the slope 
of the Atlantic Ocean, is undertaking to do too much when it 
either gives out or rescinds contracts to this or that party for 
distant monopolies, which can never be quite understood away 
from the place of their location ? 

The case of McGarrahan vice Gomez, for the New Idria quick- 
silver mine, is a notable instance of audacity, stock and the 
burning of fire crackers as elements of notability at "Washing- 
ton. The printed reports, briefs, locums and confabs on this 
case make a formidable literature. 

The New Idria mine is situated about 1 60 miles from San 
Francisco, and is one of half a dozen or more mines of cinna- 
bar in America, and second in product only to the New Alma- 
den mine, which was also the subject of prolonged litigation. 
In 1851 a party of mining pioneers seeking silver in the moun- 
tains, three thousand feet above the sea, discovered cinnabar, 
and proceeded in a small way to develop it. After a few years 
some merchants and men of small means organized with them 
a stock company for the purpose of more methodical and ex- 
tensive mining, and the mine and company took the name of 
Idria from an older mine of cinnabar in Austria. Long prior 
to this time the purchase and manufacture of Mesilan claims 
had become a profitable and seductive business, and the forma- 
tion of the new company appears to have inspired an unusually 
large transaction of this description. In February and May, 
1838, people appeared around and about the mine professing 
to look for what they named The Panoche Grande grant. This 
was represented to be a tract of land granted to one Gomez in 
the year 1844, by a Mexican Governor of Upper California, and 



270 CELEBRATED SCANDALS. 

/by him transferred for the sum of $1,100 to William McGarra- 
han, in the winter of 1857, at a period suspiciously close to the 
stocking of the mine. 

Under Gomez, this alleged grant had run a long and crooked 
career of litigation. The Commission to determine Mexican 
land grants had rejected it in 1855, but the attorney of Gomez 
got the appointment of U. S. District Attorney and bought 
half the claim for one dollar, had the case brought before the 
court of a distant district on appeal and there passed. By two 
decrees the area was fixed at three and afterward at four leagues. 
Gomez, having a bad character as a forger and perjurer, was 
got rid of, and the District Attorney and McGarrahan became 
the only claimants. Fearing the fraud in the District Court 
would undo them, a crafty appeal was made to the United 
States Supreme Court, and the record of its dismissal smuggled 
into the court records. The U. S. District Attorney, working 
on the inside, expected to make this an easy matter, but his 
complicity and the interpolation were discovered. The future 
Secretary Stanton, as special law agent for the United States, 
appeared in California at this iuncture and exposed Gomez's 
connection with the Zimantown and other frauds, and in 1861, 
Judge Ogier vacated the decree of confirmation obtained by 
the conspirators, on the ground that they had " deceived the 
Court and the U. S. Attorney had obtained a decree in his own 
favor under false pretences." However, as Judge Ogier died 
directly, his successor, — who said at the time, " a grosser case 
of fraud has rarely been presented," — was led to invalidate 
Ogier's decree on the ground of defective jurisdiction. The 
same Judge permitted an appeal, and the Attorney General of 
President Lincoln insisted upon it, whereupon tlie redoubtable 
McGarrahan brought suit in a circuit court for an injunction 
to restrain the officers from getting a transcript of the previous 
flagitious history of the case. When the transcript was got 
after long delay, McGarrahan did not proceed to contest the 
appeal on its merits, but moved to dismiss it because five years 
had elapsed since the fraudulent decree was obtained in his 



THE m'GARRAHAN* CLAIM. 271 

favor. 'This dodge was ruled out and the Supreme Court of the 
United States then formally reversed the decree obtained by 
Ord and directed the inferior court to dismiss McGarrahan's 
petition. 

Apprehending the result, McGarrahan, with the shrewdest 
counsel he coujd retain, and abetted by some men of means who 
operated upon" Congressmen and Senators, labored before the 
Department of the Interior to anticipate the Supreme Court 
with a patent for the land where the mine was situated. He 
had thrown his claim into a stock company of five millions of 
dollars as early as 1861, in the city of New York, and some- 
what later when beaten before the court and lobbying before 
Congress, he increased the capital to ten millions. Yet he was 
all the time offering the Secretary of the Interior 822,000 only 
for the same property, as he supposed, locating it in the rugged 
mountains as agricultural land. His success was but partial, 
although the sinister proceedings in the courts below embarras- 
sed the judgment of Secretaries Smith and Usher successively, 
and the celebrated Daniel E. Sickles who afterward did some 
work of the same kind against the Erie railroad company, 
sought to persuade a patent out of Mr. Lincoln. The patent 
was never obtained. The Supreme Court stood fast. And the 
lapse of time, which McGarrahan had sought to use as his ad- 
vocate, had also befriended the miners who were in possession 
of the property. Congress had meanwhile extended the pre- 
emption laws of the United States over mineral lands, and the 
money of the New Idria Company, deposited for the past five 
years (1873) in the Treasury of the United States and received 
as pre-emption money by the receiver, is a part of the perfection 
of a title already well established by twenty years of productive 
enterprise and habitation. 

It was also unfortunate for McGarrahan, of whom we can 
scarcely speak as an individual, so Protean has been his char- 
acter, that the grant of agricultural land under which he claimed 
was found on survey not to include the coveted mine, and a second 
.survey with the points set up to accomplish this purpose failed 



272 CELEBRATED SCANDALS. 

again to " float " the claim far enough. Notwithstanding this 
accumulation of misfortunes, it is the boast of the abiding 
genius who embalms this romance in himself that he still lives. 
As his lawyers express it, with a look calculated* to exact admir- 
ation, " he hangs on." But so do a good many other charac- 
ters around Washington whom we have descried in this book, 
whose limits will not permit us, even if the su^ect were worth 
the space, to speak further of this generic case. Mr. McGar- 
rahan is an Irishman of great combativeness, aM as long as he 
can get a lawyer he will keep some notoriety. Be has had sev- 
eral suits in the local courts of "Washington, twTce suing edi- 
tors who published adverse briefs and once actually seeking to 
compel the Government to give him a patent by ate mandamus. 
The estimable Secretary of the Interior, Honorable Jacob I. 
Cox, was worried out of his office by this Mr. McGarrahan's 
counsel. In our day the McGarrahan case excites a laugh 
when it comes up, as a synonym of a legal itch, incurable, not 
dangerous, but abiding and annoying. 

The power of this claim has lain almost uniformly in the 
allurement it gives attorneys who are promised large contingent 
fees, and in the extensiveness of the stock based upon its tri- 
umph, shares of which were shown before the Judiciary Com- 
mittee. 

What can fight stock ? Stock, which represents nothing 
possessed, but which is yet the corrupter and deceiver of its 
recipient ? Stock, of which the limit in such cases is illimita- 
ble ; because, if the case fails, the stock is worth nothing, and 
if it gains the stock is repudiated. It is stock which feeds cor- 
ruption and prolongs litigation in places like Washington. 

We present below a copy of a share of stock in McGarra- 
han's enterprise ; it represents a mine of which he has never 
had possession. 



\ 

\ 

THE M'GAKUAHAN CLAIM. 273 

No. 104. IncOTV XtilTZ?Yl£: ao{th ° 50 Shares. 

PANOCHE GRANDE QUICKSILVER MINING COMPANY, 
(Of California.) 

This is 'to Certify, That William McGarrahan is entitled 
'to fifty shares in the Capital Stock of the Panoche Grande 
Quicksilv* Mining Company, transferable in person or by 



Stamp. 



1 -~ ^ o j.*' - r r — — v 

attorney on the books of the said company, at its office in the city of New 
York on surrendef of this certificate. 

Witness >the Seal of the Company, and the Signatures of the 
President and Secretary, this 21st day of May, 1868. 
Fredf.rick Prank, Secretary. B. O'CONNOR, President. 

For Value Received, I hereby assign and transfer unto 

shares of the within stock, and authorize to transfer 

the same on fhj^ books of the company on surrender of this certificate. 
Dated this day of-; 18 . 



It will be observed that the above certificate of stock is not 
signed nor endorsed, and therefore it would possess no value to 
any one verdant enough to accept it in lieu of services. The 
question occurs : Why was the first five millions of stock ex- 
panded to ten millions unless with the intent to put out the 
second batch of stock in Congress after the claim had been 
taken there and for the first time a plea of equities set up. The 
Honorable Jeremiah Black expressed his opinion of this case 
in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee, March 25th, 
1870. He said: 

" Perhaps this case has some features in it more extraordin- 
ary than any of the others. It is not singular in being founded 
upon a forgery, but the decree of the District Court was ob- 
tained by a fraud more gross than the original fabrication of 
the title, and the object of the claimants was very near being 
consummated by an imposture on' the Supreme Court more 
atrocious than either." 

Two senators, Honorable 0. S. Ferry of Connecticut and 
Honorable George H. Williams of Oregon, the latter Attorney 
General of the United States, at a subsequent day conchided 
their report on the subject of McGarrahan's claim in the follow- 
ing words : 

18 



274 CELEBRATED SCANDALS. 

""Dependent upon the passage of the bill before the Senate 
is a prize of more than half a million of dollars. Politicians, 
lawyers, and editors have taken large shares in the lottery ; 
the professional lobby, both male and female, have been mar- 
shaled, and behind and around McGarrahan is a crowd impa- 
tient of delay and hungry for the spoils of victory. 

The undersigned submit their report with 'the utmost confi- 
dence that the Senate will resist this pressure ; that it will up- 
hold the law as it has been settled by the uniform decision of 
the Supreme Court for nearly twenty years ; that it will pro- 
tect the title to hundreds of millions of property threatened by 
this bill, and that it will decide now for all time that specula- 
tors in Mexican land titles, defeated in the courts of justice, 
will find no favor for their swindling schemes in the halls of 
legislation." 



CHAPTEE XXI. 



THE CRIMES AND FOLLIES OF OUR PUBLIC LIFE. 

"Come to my office," said Mr. Burton C. Cook, M. C, one 
day, "and I will show you what I am following up." 

In the second story, and rear part of the house, the lighted 
gas reflectors showed tables strewn with reports and papers, 
yet methodized by a legal hand and ready for reference. Tak- 
ing up a thick book of perhaps eight hundred pages, made of 
bound documents, and endorsed, 

"Land Claims— New Slexico," the Congressman said: 

" Here you will find a list of New Mexican Claims. There 
are nineteen of them reported here. The most audacious one 
is the Beaubean and Miranda claim, which is interpreted by its 
attorneys and owners to enclose 450 square leagues of land, 
or between two millions and three millions of acres." 

I opened my eyes. 

" What pretext can such a claim have to set up ? It is a 
State of itself." 

"It is a principality," said Mr. Cook; "each of these nine- 
teen cases is a principality. I will show you how they came 
to be. 

" Before New Mexico came into the possession of the United 
States, the Mexican Government enacted a land law, an exten- 
sive homestead bill, in character, — which was intended to pro- 
mote emigration to its uninhabited provinces. This law gave 
eleven square leagues of land to certain few persons, to encour- 

(275-) 



276 CRIMES AND FOLLIES. 

age them to settle upon the soil with companies of people. 
Generally, some provision or promise was exacted from the 
grantee, and, as the whole region was unsurveyed, the limits 
of the grant were to be ascertained, and fixed by natural land- 
marks. I will show you, in a moment, how unreliably and 
carelessly the routes and the points of connection of these 
boundaries were placed. By the treaty called Gaudaloupe-Hi- 
dalgo, which conveyed to us the region of New Mexico, we 
were bound to carry out the stipulations of the Mexican Gov- 
ernment as to these grants, and they are to be confirmed by 
direct act of Congress, of course, and then the Secretary of 
the Interior issues a patent for them. Ever since that treaty, 
our Government, in all its parts, has been pestered and absorbed 
with these vague and vastly interpreted grants. My bill, 
founded in equity and the treaty alike, proposes to enact that, 
unless the contrary is directly specified in the original grant, 
each of these grants shall be interpreted to mean eleven square 
leagues and no more, according to the Mexican law under 
which they all arose." 

" Is there anybody of modesty sufficient to demand more 
than that ? " 

"Why, as I have told you, each of these claims has been 
stretched to a principality. The Beaubean claim wants 450 
square leagues. The suggestion of this bill of mine has raised 
a howl from all these claimants. Some of them, I suppose, 
have erected their patents into stock companies, and by the 
united vehemence of their stockholders propose to be satisfied 
with nothing less than the wildest construction of their grants." 

"This, Mr. Cook," said I, "is worse than the railroad land 
grants." 

" Why, yes ! The railroad leaves us every alternate section. 
It raises the value of the common domain of the country. But 
these grants take everything. They spoil the settlement of a 
region, put in the power of a few to overrule the many in the 
courts of justice and in Congress, and immigration is discour- 
aged before them." 



CRIMES AND FOLLIES. 277 

"I have heard," said I, "that a certain Judge "Watts, who 
was the first Delegate to Congress from New Mexico, and who 
has made a princely fortune out of these claims, is now the 
Attorney-General here for the whole of them." 

"That," replied the reticent man, "I cannot speak about. 
But let us look at some of these claims. Here is the Beau- 
bean-Miranda claim, professing to have been granted by Gov- 
ernor Manuel Armijo, in 1841, to a Canadian and a Mexican, 
and approved, after some litigation, by the New Mexican As- 
sembly in 1844. It was confirmed by the New Mexican Sur- 
veyor-General in 1857, and by Congress ol the same year, 
Judah P. Benjamin, if I mistake not, reporting the bill. 

" In one of Benjamin's reports, he refers to the Yihil claim — 
another one — and showing that the latter is interpreted to mean 
100 square leagues of land, his committee says: This is too 
extravagant for belief. Yet the Beaubean-Miranda claim, 
which the committee reported favorably upon in the same 
breath, is actually here demanding 450 square leagues ! It is 
plain, you see, that the committee supposed the Beaubean 
claim was to be eleven square leagues, according to the Mex- 
ican law." 

" Now let us see the language of Beaubean and Miranda 
petitioning for this grant : ' A grant of land in the now county 
of Taos, commencing below the junction of the Rayado and Red 
River.' Mark you ! nothing is said as to how far below the 
junction. ' From thence in a direct line to the east to the 
first hills, from thence, following the course of Red River, in a 
northerly direction, to the junction of the Una de Gato with 
Red River, from whence, following along said hills to the east 
of the Una de Gato River, to the summit of the table land, 
from whence, turning northwest, following said summit, to the 
summit of the mountain which separates the waters of rivers 
which run toward the east from those which run to the west ; 
from thence, following the summit of said mountain in a south- 
erly direction, to the first hill of the Rayado River ; from 
thence, following along the line of said hill, to the place of be- 



278 . NEW MEXICAN LAND CLAIMS. 

ginning.' Now, you will observe that 'this indefinite descrip- 
tion has a high degree of elasticity if one end is pulled by 
a sharp fellow. In one of the papers accompanying this grant 
is an admission that it does not embrace more than fifteen or 
eighteen leagues. Now, it amounts up to between two millions 
and three millions of acres. You can readily see how this is 
accomplished. The original patentee takes his eleven leagues 
legitimately belonging to him, and, after a while, observing a 
fine piece of pasture land or running brook half a mile be- 
yond, he pulls up his stake and carries it forward. After a 
while he discovers another nice tract, and seizes it, and finally 
his eleven square leagues means anything. On May 29, 1858, 
Mr. Sandidge reported for the Committee of Private Land 
Claims, that there was an unknown quantity of land claimed 
by most of the parties. Says this gentleman in his brief 
report : 

' A survey of the lands, it is presumed, will not be ordered by 
Congress in advance of a recogniton of title.' 

Of the fourteen claims proposed to be confirmed by this bill, 
the area of but five of them is either stated or estimated. 
They are for one league, four leagues, five leagues, seven thou- 
sand six hundred acres, and about twenty thousand acres. 

Whether the other claims embrace a less or greater amount 
is not and cannot be made known from the documentary 
evidence of title forwarded by the Surveyor-General. 

The grant, in each case, refers to some stream, hill, moun- 
tain-top, valley, or other known natural object, for boundary." 

" If you will take this book home," concluded Mr. Cook, 
" and examine it, you will see by what loose beginnings, shrewd 
interpretations, and pregnant collusions between surveyors and 
grantees these old inherited claims have come to be afflictions 
and deadly parasites. They threaten to absorb all the valua- 
ble lands in our Southwestern Territories, to plague the people 
with litigation and monopoly, and perhaps, to work corruption 
in the Federal Legislature. My bill proposes merely to carry 
out the provisions of the Mexican law — to limit each of these 



BLACK BOB LAND CLAIM. 279 

claims to eleven square leagues, and throw the rest in o the 
public domain for the benefit of the small settler and the gen- 
uine immigrant." 

I carried the book home, and proceeded to wade through its 
half-breed documents — loose, vagarious, sprinkled over with 
Spanish Republican interjections of: " I swear that I do not act 
in malice," " God preserve the Republic," " Nibs and liberty," 
and, after observing here the Martinez claim, there the Valle, 
yonder the Scolly, near by the Tecolate, and so forth, and so 
forth, sleepily, I wondered in what freak of time a Mexican was 
made, and by what unfortunate collusion a Yankee ran against 
him, in order that by the design of the one and the stupidity 
of the other, posterity might go waiting, and Congress be 
resolved to a land office. 

Amongst the pleasantries of Kansas politics is the Black Bob 
land claim, which led to a wrangle between the Senate side of 
the national representation of the Commonwealth, and the 
House side. It seems that a band of Shawnee Indians, headed 
by one Black Bob, their Chief, received, in 1854, thirty-five 
thousand acres of land in Johnson County, Southeastern Kan- 
sas ; or, in other words, about two hundred acres to each man 
in the tribe. The treaty giving the lands specified that they 
should be held in common by the band, but that if any one 
Indian wanted to take his land in severalty he might do so, and 
obtain a patent from the Indian Commissioner at Washington. 
Now, during the war, Quantrell's rebel band drove the Black 
Bobs out of their reservation, and scattered them over the 
Indian Country. It was then revealed to certain Kansas politi- 
cians and speculators, that they might take advantage of the 
severalty clause in the treaty afore-named ; and, accordingly, 
when the Black Bobs returned, after the war, they found the 
most available portion of the reservation — the rich, the well- 
watered, the heavily-timbered tracts — detached from the coun- 
try, and this detachment had been effected by manipulating the 
Indian Bureau in the city of Washington. Sixty-nine Indians 
were represented to have forwarded requests for separate 



280 CRIMES AND FOLLIES. 

patents, and these patents were obtained by a Congressman and 
quietly forwarded to the city of Lawrence, where they were 
secretly kept eleven months in the vaults of the First National 
Bank there ; the few Indians of the sixty-nine who really 
remained alive, knowing nothing about the matter. Of course, 
during these eleven months the speculators and politicians who 
had secured the land patents, were negotiating with the Indians, 
to the disadvantage of the latter, so that if they should consent 
to a sale, the concealed patent would be ready to be brought 
forward in the nick of time, in the closing up of the bargain. 
Bat this was not the worst. About twelve hundred unsuspec- 
ting immigrants had meantime been deluded into the belief, 
that if they would occupy the deserted Black Bob Reservation, and 
make improvements thereon, they should have the right of pre- 
emption and subsequent purchase. These settlers made a quar- 
ter of million improvements upon the Black Bob lands, and now 
they are informed that their titles are defective, while the 
Indians on the other hand, find their country slipping up under 
their feet. 

A set of claims before Congress to which reference has been 
already made dates back eighty years. 

The French claims, so called, were for vessels and cargoes 
seized by the French between 1793 and 1800. The French 
never explicitly recognized these claims, except to offset them 
with others ; but, by the treaty under which France sold Louisi- 
ana, she abated 20,000,000 francs of the purchase money, (or 
$4,000,000), to adjust and pay claims for captures, supplies, 
and embargoes, by which American citizens were sufferers. 

A host of claimants at once appealed to Congress. In 1802 
and 1807, a Committee of Congress reported favorably to pay- 
ing them. In 1835, the Senate passed a bill giving $5,000,000 
to such claimants ; but the House defeated it. They continued 
to importune the two Houses even down to the breaking out of 
the Rebellion ; loafers, and vagabonds, and listless sons of men 
grew up expectant on these claims. Insurers, assignees, job- 
bers and agents, strained their wits and ran off their legs about 



THE FRENCH CLAIMS. 281 

them. But Benton showed that, during the period in question, 
men made fortunes if they saved one ship in four or five from 
the French cruisers ; and the same can be shown to have been 
the case during the Rebellion, when transports commanded 
enormous hire, and our great shippers forsook the sea volunta- 
rily to take army contracts, and manufacture and sell supplies. 
Imagine Vanderbilt, the King of the Sea, losing anything by 
the war, or any ship builder who built a monitor, or any impor- 
ter, or any sea captain. 

As to insurance claims, here is a pithy extract from Benton's 
speech : 

"One of the most revolting features of this bill is its relation 
to the insurers. The most infamous and odious act ever passed 
by Congress was the Certificate-Funding Act of 1793, — an act 
passed in favor of a crowd of speculators ; but the principle of 
this bill is more odious than even it. I mean that of paying 
insurers for their losses. The United States, sir, insure ! Can 
anything be conceived more revolting and atrocious than to 
divert the funds of the Treasury to such iniquitous uses ? It 
would be far more just and equitable if Congress were to insure 
the farmers and planters, and pay them their losses on the 
failure of the cotton crop ; they, sir, are more entitled to put 
forth such claims than speculators and gamblers, whose trade 
and business is to make money by losses." 

Said Benton, " There ought to be some limit to these. presenta- 
tions of the same claim. It is a game at which the government 
has no chance. Claims become stronger upon age, — gain double 
strength upon time, — too often directly by newly-discovered 
evidence, — always indirectly by the loss of adversary evidence, 
and by the death of contemporaries." 

" Two remedies are in the hands of Congress : one to break 
up claim-agencies, by allowing no claim to be paid to an agent ; 
the other, to break up speculating assignments, by allowing no 
more to be received by an assignee than he has actually paid 
for the claims." 

" Assignees and agents are now the great presenters of claims 



282 CRIMES AND FOLLIES. 

against the government. They constitute a profession, a new 
one, — resident at Washington City. Skillful and persevering, 
acting on system and in phalanx, they are entirely an overmatch 
for the succession of new members, who come ignorantly to the 
consideration of the cases which they have so well dressed up." 

" It would be to the honor of Congress and the protection of 
the Treasury, to institute a searching examination into the 
practices of these agents, to see whether any undue means are 
used to procure the legislation they desire." 

Mr. Benton did not then know that the time would come 
when the President's brother-in-law would become a claim 
agent in Washington, and Congressmen and Heads of Depart- 
ments as well. 

Reading an old copy of Basil Hall's travels in the United 
States, during Jackson's administration, in a book which excited 
the wildest expressions of outrage at the time amongst our 
papers, I came to this curious account of how tender they were 
in appropriating money a third of a century ago. 

" One of the first debates," says Hall, who was an aristocratic 
British officer, " at which I was present, related to a pecuniary 
claim of the late President Monroe, of the United States, 
amounting, if I remember rightly, to $60,000. This claim had 
long been urged, and .been repeatedly referred to Committees 
of the House of Representatives, who, after a careful investiga- 
tion of the subject, had reported in favor of its justice. The 
question at length came on for discussion, ' Is the debt claimed 
by Mr. Monroe from the United States, a just debt or not ?' 
Nothing could possibly be more simple. There was a plain 
matter of debtor and creditor, a problem of figures, the solution 
of which must rest on a patient examination of accounts, and 
charges, and balances. It was a question after the heart of 
Joseph Hume, — a bone of which that most useful legislator 
understands so well how to get at the marrow. Well, how was 
this dry question treated in the House of Representatives ? 
Why, as follows : little or nothing was said as to the intrinsic 
justice or validity of the claim. Committees of the House had 



CLAIMS. 283 

repeatedly reported in its favor, and I heard no attempt, by fact 
or inference, to prove the fallacy of their decision. But a great 
deal was said about the political character of Mr. Monroe, some 
dozen years before, and a great deal about Virginia, and its 
Presidents, and its members, and its attempts to govern the 
Union, and its selfish policy. A vehement discussion followed 
as to whether Mr. Monroe or Chancellor Livingstone, had been 
the efficient agent in procuring the cession of Louisiana. Mem- 
bers waxed warm in attack and recrimination, and a fiery gentle- 
man from Virginia was repeatedly called to order by the 
Speaker. One member declared that, disapproving altogether 
of the former policy of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet, he should cer- 
tainly now oppose his demand for payment of a debt of which it 
was not attempted to prove the injustice. Another thought 
Mr. Monroe would be very well off if he got half of what he 
claimed, and moved an amendment to that effect, which, being 
considered a kind of compromise, I believe, was at length car- 
ried, after repeated adjournments, and much clamorous debate. 

The City of Washington is full of hopes, of claims, of linger- 
ers. Heavens ! what a word has that word " CLAIM " be- 
come to me since I have dwelt in Washington ! A word full 
of dreams and jewels, acres of silks, long, luxurious voyages in 
foreign lands, and daughters married to perpetual intellect. 
And yet a word tied down to an unpaid tavern bill, the misery 
of begging a loan, the waiting for a draft, the croon of a shrill 
landlady, sending up her account, the ever half-dread of a 
crushed assurance and a vision dispelled which alone makes 
life endurable ! This is the word Claim — a word between the 
Christian's immortal hope and the beggar's terrible plea. 

I remember once seeing a man with a wild eye. He was 
dressed like a banker. Somebody cried to him : " They have 
passed your claim ?" 

"No, they have just beat me by five votes !" 

He showed a set of white teeth, laughing, but his eye was 
full of drunkenness. I looked into its laugh and shuddered. 
It was the laugh of a son who cries to his father, " Leave your 



284 CRIMES. AND FOLLIES. 

house forever ? Yes. With pleasure and forever !" Reck- 
lessness and despair, smile of outer darkness ; the hope of that 
smile is tumbling through worlds of space, like Satan, 
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky. 

This man, however, happened to be the celebrated Blanton 
Duncan, author of the subsequent Louisville Convention. He 
plunged into politics and got what he wanted. 

Amongst the claims against the Pension Office, after the 
close of the war, was one of a fraudulent nature, for which the 
Congressman who presented it was convicted before the crimi- 
nal court of Washington ; Stokes, of Tennessee, long a mem- 
ber of Congress, and the Radical candidate for Governor of 
Tennessee against Lenter. Senator Brownlow came out 
against Stokes, and was denounced for it as abetting a bolter's 
ticket. 

Stokes is one of the ordinary run of political creatures — 
nearly an old man, bald, wire-pulling, worn down with the 
moral yielding of no original nature. Such men escape from 
society into the boozing-kens of politics, and descend from the 
Capital to the Court of Justice, like the bad Moslem from the 
Bridge of Paradise to Eblis. The details ot this case, particu- 
larly in the published correspondence of Stokes himself, are the 
vindication of the plainest revelations of newspaper correspond- 
ence from this city. Here are some passages written by this 
man to his friend, who has turned State's evidence : 

All I want is to get out of Congress, and I can get up the 
largest claim business ever done. If you fool me I am ruined. 
The letters are coming from all quarters for claims ; we can 
make $500,000 within two years, it you will stand by me, 
and take my advice. Keep back the news from all who will 
not sell their claims.; let no one see the amount of certificates. 
The whole liability for the false swearing is on the men and 
officers. 

In brief, Stokes obtained claims for a large amount of money 
from a fictitious military organization, and, while a member of 
Congress, used their perjured affidavits to press the case ; and, 



SALE OP CADETSHIPS. 285 

when the matter was about to pass the Department, he and 
his confederate sought, while solely possessed of the secret, to 
purchase the false claims. 

A case that showed the virtue of the worst class of carpet- 
bagging members of Congress came up before the Military 
Committee in 1869, on the suggestion of General Slocum, of 
New York. It referred to certain advertisements, and news- 
paper and private charges, tending to prove that cadetships, 
both at Annapolis and West Point, are openly offered for sale 
and disposed of to the highest bidder. Congress did itself credit 
by unanimously and promptly ordering an investigation of 
the subject, and unless I am mistaken, the Committee of Mili- 
tary Affairs has the material in it to probe the subject to the 
bottom. John A. Logan, who cares for nobody, is the chair- 
man of the committee, and some soldiers upon it are Cobb, of 
Wisconsin, the cool colonel of the splendid Fifth Infantry of 
that State, — in whose camp I have passed many cheerful hours 
on the hills of the Chickahominy, — Negley, of Pittsburgh, Slo- 
cum, who was both a West Pointer and a Major-General, and 
Stoughton, Packard, Asper, Witcher, and Morgan, all good offi- 
cers. I am told that this is the opinion of some members of 
the committee, based upon the appended data : 

An advertisement appeared in the New York Times some 
short time before, offering to dispose of a cadetship to persons 
of means. Just prior to that time, a Western Pennsylvanian 
paper gave the names of two or three persons who had been 
addressed by parties here, offering to place their sons in the 
army or navy. Judge Woodward, of Wilkesbarre, Pa., knew 
a lady who received a like notification. A General (whether 
of militia or volunteers, not expressed) in Connecticut, is said 
to have a son now at one of the Academies for whose appoint- 
ment he paid two thousand dollars. There are other cases 
lying behind these, ii the reports have any foundation, but they 
will probably be difficult to trace out, because the father or the 
son who purchases a place at West Point, will be as sensitive 



236 CRIMES- AND FOLLIES. \ 

to exposure as the Congressman taking his perquisites to the 
shamble. 

A Republican Senator, speaking to me on this matter, said : 
" There are a number of men representing the Southern 
States, who have come in under the reconstruction acts, and 
they are totally irresponsible, because they know that they will 
never come back here again. Therefore they go in for a trade 
on every measure, and are ready, if necessary, to face humili- 
ation and exposure." 

The effect of the cadetship exposure was to expel a carpet- 
bagger from South Carolina, by the name of Whittemore, to 
compel the resignation of Golladay, of Tennessee, and to im- 
plicate Pettis, of Pennsylvania, Sypher, of Louisiana, and 
several others. 

About the same time, a member of Congress, by the name of 
Bowen, of South Carolina, was tried for two separate acts of 
bigamy, and on one convicted, and sent to the penitentiary. 
President Grant pardoned him, and he returned to South Caro- 
lina, to be elected to the State Legislature, and afterward to 
the Sheriffalty of Charleston. 

Bowen, the alleged bigamist, married a sprightly, semi-poli- 
tical lady, bearing the aristocratic name of Pettigrew King. 
This dashing widow of the middle age, has long figured in this 
city as a sort of well-preserved belle. Bowen is a native of 
Rhode Island, fond of female society, and it is supposed that 
having a divorce under way from the first Mrs. Bowen, he was 
unable to resist the impulse of a more congenial matrimonial 
partnership, and somewhat anticipated the action of the divorce 
court. This little indifference to the precise time of things 
constituted all the difference between respectability and big- 
amy. There is the usual complaint on Mr. Bowen's part that 
he is the victim of persecution. Heaven knows that there is 
too much hounding of folks under this Government, and that the 
worst adversary one can make is a rival for honors. The 
most dishonorable road to tread now-a-days is the road to 



FRIENDSHIP AS A POLITICAL ELEMENT. 287 

honor. Along that road lies such a vista as the late Robert T. 
Conrad made his hero, Aylmere, see : 

Ambition struggles with a sea of hate ; 
He who sweats up the ridgy grade of life 
Finds at each station icy scorn above, / 

Below him hooting envy. 

A formidable interest in this country is the gambling inter- 
est. The telegraph will wink in a moment any probable news 
to Wall street, and if Boutwell ever does resign, probably 
fifty men will know it before he, himself, receives the assur- 
ance. At his elbow — perhaps at the President's elbow — Wall 
street keeps its man, and should the President frown but once 
when Boutwell's name is mentioned, it will be felt in Wall 
street like a portentous eclipse. 

" What do you make out of Washington political life, from 
what you have seen •?" 

This was my question to an eminently practical man, who 
did nOt believe in general principles, and he replied : 

" The feature which is most curious to me is the fact that so 
much legislation goes by ' friends.' Friends in Washington 
never seem to inquire whether a thing be right or wrong, but 
they tie to a man to help him out because they are his ' friends.' 
The word ' friends ' has assumed a curious meaning to me since 
I came here. I hear this or that politician discussed, and 
everything possible is admitted against his character ; but it is 
always said in the end : Jones stands by his ' friends,' and when 
another man comes up who is not accused of any improprieties 
everybody gives him a short damn, and says : ' Oh, he is of no 
use to any body ; he never stood by a " friend " in his life !' 
What makes all this funnier to me is the knowledge and belief 
I have, that these ' friends ' are not paid anything. They turn 
in and work for a ' friend ' like wheel-horses, without reward, 
trampling down and slaughtering for him ; they seem to enter- 
tain no doubt that his cause is perfectly just, and to avoid being 
prejudiced, they never investigate it. How is this ?" 

I endeavored to supply a general principle for my friend, the 



288 CEIMES AND FOLLIES. 

delegate, by saying that this sort of " friendship " grew out of 
party politics, the nominating convention, and the canvass, 
where one's candidate was pushed through by a mob and a 
howl, bonfires, processions, and every possible stultification of 
the individual reason. Every partisan of enough consequence 
becomes a " friend," and this sort of friendship holds activity 
to be its sole criterion. The partisan, bv the time he gets to 
Congress or to office, holds the sum of political virtue to be 
merely personal faithfulness, and thus men like Buchanan reach 
the Presidency, and men like Grant, discovering a temporary 
defection in a " friend," lose confidence in human nature. 

The last Electoral vote, it is to be hoped, has been counted. 
Like the Electors of Germany who had to choose the Emperor, 
the American Electoral College has probably expired. 

It would still be a beautiful form of electing our President, if 
the public's attention to their own affairs permitted, — to give 
the finest modesty in each state the honorable privilege of asso- 
ciating their names with a President's, and, as the sons of Peers 
attend a King to his coronation, to usher in a popular magis- 
trate under the personal escort of a great and noble faculty of 
his fellow-citizens. But what is this- Electoral College of ours 
now-a-days ? A College without scholarship or other endow- 
ments, made up of scrub caucus notorieties often, who are hon- 
ored with such brief public mention as soldiers, travelers, and 
passing notorieties often get under the degree of D. D., L L. D., 
and so forth, Pangloss-fashion. 

The Electoral faculty has come to have chiefly the faculties 
of smelling, tasting, and handling. It was a practical proposi- 
tion ; but, in the rise of the great buccaneer gangs called parties, 
the College has come to be a piece of finery as cumbrous as it 
is dangerous. Therefore, without regret, we wipe away one of 
the antique conceits of our Revolutionary forefathers, and, as 
neither party cares anything about the matter, it will be a pity 
to present it to the people without making sufficient issue to 
bring out a vote. Add, therefore, an amendment suggesting 
the propriety of making the office of Senator elective by the 
people of each state. 



A NATIONAL CONVENTION DESIRABLE. 289 

We "have come to that place where a national constitutional 
convention is desirable. 

Everything has been changed by the agencies of steam, in- 
ventions, corporate . movement, prosperity, and emancipation. 
The old Constitution is an honored charter, belonging to the 
dead generations. It can point the moral, adorn the tale, and 
suggest the framework of a new and more accordant plan of 
Republican Government. But, before the centennial year of 
independence, we should hold a grand investigation, directed 
from the advanced thought and observation of the country, and 
independent of party like the Constitutional Convention of 
1787. When the times are out of joint, as we see them now, 
the error lies in fundamentals more probably than in particu- 
lars. We are proceeding like the America subsequent to the 
revolution, which endeavored to make the Articles of Confed- 
eration apply to a total change of society and instrumentalities. 

After the Revolution, they proceeded very much as we have 
done since the Rebellion. They expatriated the Loyalists, or 
Tories, and then softened toward them. They issued' much 
and various currency, and were victims of fluctuation, specula- 
tion, high prices, and corruption. Disorders broke out, and 
two governments in the same states confronted each other. 
Piecemeal remedies were proposed ; but the pressure of busi- 
ness upon Congress prevented any general and landscape dis- 
cussion of the evils of the period, until May 25th, 1787, when 
the Convention to revise the Articles of Confederation met in 
the State House at Philadelphia. 

That spectacle re-presented, would be the noblest centennial 
exhibition for the year 1876. Better begin it on the centennial 
of the outbreak of the War of Independence, in 1874 Ei With 
General Grant, if need be, presiding in the chair, as did Wash- 
ington, and the passions of parties burnt out by their mutual 
and equal exhaustion, let the cry of factions be drowned, and 
the learned and freedom-loving, the thinking and practical 
leaders of the period, re-examine the needs of the time, and 

attend to the harmonious revision of an organic system. 

19 . '. 



290 . ' CRIMES AND FOLLIES. 

Congress will never have the time, and parties will never 
have the honesty, to do the work. That it is needed to be 
done, is plain to any who feel that "the questions paramount 
between capital and labor, producer and carrier, party and pur- 
ity, are not such as can ever be examined by a Congress pos- 
sessing, in so little the confidence of the people as that which is 
passing out and that which is nest to come.' 

A good thing has been going the rounds, attributed to Mun- 
gen, of Ohio. He is said to have walked Up to Whittemore on 
the eve of the latter' s expulsion, last. week and said: 

" Whittemore, I know how you can hold your seat." 

" How ?" asked Whittemore earnestly. 

" Get a Democrat to contest it." 

In 1873, the flagrant case of Senator Caldwell brought out 
prominently the disposition of partisans to cover crimes of each 
other. Caldwell, whose case will be hereafter referred to, had. 
purchased from the legislature of Kansas a seat in the Senate, 
and witnesses came to Washington to make oath to the fact. 
A committee of investigation was ordered, and a majority 
headed by Senator Morton, reported that Caldwell had not been 
honestly elected to his seat. The cloak of the caucus was at 
once thrown over Caldwell, and Senators Colliding, Logan, Car- 
penter, and Nye undertook to save him. 

As I heard the speech on the Caldwell case from Senator 
Morton's lips, while he sat there numb in the extremities, but 
in the head clear, conscious and vigorous, I felt that, all things 
considered, he was one of the strongest characters in the Sen- 
ate. 

To take position, as Morton did, against Caldwell, required 
some mental and moral courage ; for the Senate is such a little 
body, that fellowship prevails in it as in a female seminary. 
A big conspiracy gathered around Caldwell for his support, led 
by Simon Cameron, whose three cavalry majors were Matt Car 
penter, Ross Colliding, and John Logan. Simon Cameron has 
outlived all the possibilities of vindication, except in the line 
of personal loyalty. He is the apostle of that miserable moral- 



TUB CALDWELL DEBATE. 291 

ity which will support what is termed " a friend," no matter 
how black the character may be, provided only that the friend 
returns the said loyalty to the extent of supporting any wick- 
edness in the Senator. If this kind of morality is to prevail 
in public life, what safety will the constituent have ? Public 
duty is not to be measured upon the scale of matrimonial at- 
tachment : and no worse code can be set to a great public body 
than merely friendly inclination. When I hear of a man in 
the Senate standing by his friends in all cases I turn insensi- 
bly to the man who is standing by his country. 

When the Caldwell debate came up, Morton and Conkling fell 
into antagonistic positions. Morton's position was taken like a 
statesman. He saw that the Senate, under existing practices, 
was losing the respect of the country, and that a stop must be 
put to the corrupt practices of Senatorial elections. Caldwell's 
case was eminently fit to make the application ; for Caldwell 
was of such a nature that degradation could not much degrade 
him, nor vindication much vindicate him. Nature seemed to 
have selected this poor little fellow as a convenient instance to 
be made a senatorial example of. Had the person to be de- 
graded served his country in the war, or shown a gallant figure, 
or brought with hint any of those human testimonials Avhich 
give consideration, a chivalric man like Morton might have 
hesitated. I conceive that Powell Clayton is a person whom a 
gentleman might dislike to prosecute for corruption, because 
Clayton was a brave soldier and is a game carpet-bagger. But 
Caldwell is a little Kansas rich man, — nothing more. Mr. Mor- 
ton selected him as the legitimate carcass with which to make 
a missile for the other buzzards of the Senate. 

Mr. Conkling presumed that he could look at his legs and 
walk straight into the Presidency in 1876. Mr. Morton, who 
is a statesman, as his remarkable administration of both Indiana 
and Kentucky showed, during the war, made up his mind that, 
if he was to respect himself and his fellow-Senators, lie must 
make corruptions odious. Hence, Morton made his report, and 
delivered li'is speech in favor of vacating .Caldwell's place. 



292 CRIMES AND FOLLIES. 

Without thinking, without knowing, guided by blind ambition, 
Conkling at once took the other course, expecting to read a 
rival out of the race for the Presidency. No greater compli- 
ment could be paid to the .solid ability and executive vigor of 
Morton than the exteiit of the conspiracy which assembled to 
defeat him. There was that untiring worker, Cameron. There 
was the Jesuitical "and respectable legal columbiad, John Scott, 
— whom some think to be the best lawyer in the Senate, and 
correspondingly inferior as a statesman. There was Anthony, 
of Rhode Island, a mighty consumer of early shad and of can- 
vas-backs, and of course, with enormous bowels of compassion. 
There were infirm Democrats, like Stockton and Bayard, who 
argue in favor of state rights, because they conceive the entire 
state to be their personal selves. There was Wright, of Iowa, 
who wished to save Caldwell to consistently save Clayton. 
There was Howe, of Wisconsin, whose judgment is of no con- 
sequence ■, but whose respectability is an ornament to the firma- 
ment as he is defined against it. I forget how many more en- 
tered into the arrangement to save Caldwell, but they were a 
very scared lot when they knew that the great, black, smithy 
face of Morton was in pursuit of them. 

I did not believe that Morton would make his point, because, 
in the congregation of small particles, you can sometimes dust 
out the eyes of a giant. The moral atmosphere which over 
the Capitol was dark and heavy, in view of the probability of 
corruption being solemnly defined by the Senate as outside of 
its responsibilities. 

But Morton is a man who kindles and enlarges by opposition, 
when aware that his cause is legitimate and popular. Not all 
the outside button-holing of Cameron, nor the froth of Conkling, 
made headway against his determined spirit. He had prepared 
a closing speech to overwhelm Caldwell ; aiid, from what I 
have heard of the contents, of that speech, I presume that, had 
ho delivered it, it would have spread his reputation abroad as 
one of the most determined moral reformers of his time. 
Aware of the calamities impending in that speech, little Cald- 



THE FRANKING IMPERTINENCE. 293 

well, who preserves this redeeming quality, that he can feel 
a little, hastily delivered his resignation to the Governor of 
the State, and disappeared like a will-o'-the-wisp. He would 
have received every vote ol the people who have been corruptly 
elected to the Senate ; and you can imagine how many there 
can be of this class when Senator Anthony expresses the opin- 
ion that no person has been fairly elected from any of the 
Southern States, excepting from Virginia and Kentucky. 

Amidst the scandals and exposures of 1872-8, Postmaster 
General Creswell, with the help of Senator Ramsey in the Sen- 
ate, and Congressman Farnsworth in the House, procured the 
abolition of a very old and extravagant nuisance, the frank- 
ing privilege. The franking privilege, like every evil which 
has become an, institution, had its defenders, and still retains 
them. So had Slavery, and very pious and philosophical ones. 
The human mind can make its deformities and diseases philan- 
thropic, and all the excuses for the franking privilege were di- 
rected from the centre. In the right light of responsible busi- 
ness and a general economy, what was worse than to entrust a 
chap just elected for two years to Congress, with the broadcast 
prerogative to ride down the mails with all his household effects, 
and, as a part of the same privilege, to create effects for the 
purpose of franking them — the wild excuses of public printing 
—which were rapidly assuming the development of an official 
journal (seriously proposed by Henry B. Anthony), to match 
the independent press, and be edited by Congress — arose upon 
the wand of the guileless franker, who saw no use of putting a 
girdle round the world unless it had something else to tie to. 
The "privilege", so-called, cheapened the dignity of Congress, 
made mendicancy brazen, and set up the public deadhead as 
the highest example to man. The use of the privilege made 
the Congressman a mere scrivener, defrauding public business 
of his attention to write all clay meaningless iterations of his 
prostituted name to compliment unsophisticated individuals 
who, for -a Patent Office Report, would abdicate the rights of 
citizenship. The class of public man who is tumbling now, 



294 CRIMES AND FOLLIES. 

like a feather subjected to gravity, is this franker, this scrivener. 
He has written his name, like a blind demagogue, till he knows 
no other dutiful motion. He has sought to make his name a 
household word at the public expense, and, like the wretch con- 
demned by Jupiter to empty a well with a sieve, he hopes to 
accomplish the task of subduing mankind with the franking 
privilege. Hence a little warrantable forgery, and half-a-dozen 
clerks and shysters are invited to take lessons in penmanship, 
to increase the number of hands and cheat the Post-Office fur- 
ther. Finally, dragooning mechanism to carry on his deception, 
this Honorable demagogue procures to be made a series of steel- 
dies, and, like a counterfeiter, he and his band, with inks, 
sponges, and all the other appurtenances of a counterfeiting- 
house, stamp and despatch to a reckless constituency, tons of 
stuff which is nothing else but an obligation imposed upon the 
recipient, without cost to the sender. 

It is by the infinitude of little obligations like this that the 
voter disappears in his manliness, and the demagogue perpetu- 
ates himself. When a tyrant has personally smiled upon the 
majority of his subjects, chucked a large percentage of the babies 
under the chin, and addressed a half-a-dozen of the orthodox 
societies, he has already disarmed the militia. But it so hap- 
pens, in our human nature, that the exercise of these groveling 
processes wears out the demagogue before he has made the 
round of the people. The franking privilege expires, grudged 
by. its abashed defenders, who have other charges to meet, and, 
to escape detection, have thrown their signet-rings into the 
water. As it expires, behold descend from the public gaze 
these greatest of all the frankers : Harlan, Colfax, Kelley! 

Mr. Colfax was much befriended at the time he was shown 
to be involved in the Credit Mobilier exposure, by the Adams 
Express Company, — a corporation which is always timely in 
the delivery of free passes to people in public life. Hence the 
boxes of books which go hence to all parts of the country, not 
being adaptable to the mail-care. A favorite form of swindling 
through the mails, is to bag the books and address them : " Hon. 



THE DANGER OP PERQUISITES. - 295 

Issachar Squpple, United States Senator, Mizzen-Top Halls, 
Hough County, — , care of Reverend Pelopponesus Jones.'-' It 
is all understood beforehand that Jones is to keep the books, 
but Squpple is to address them to himself to avoid postage. 
Can public life be even and direct where such evasions are the 
rule and not the exception ? 

George Francis Train said once, in a speech at Cincinnati, — 
and if John Wesley had said the same, it would have been no 
truer — " The Legislature rides free, the press rides free, the 
clergy ride free. God help us ! who, then, can resist these rail- 
way corporations ? " 

And so we may say of Congress, that it will never act for the 
public good until every perquisite is surrendered, and the Hon- 
orable member is an independent man. 

The Christian has somewhat shared in the optimism of the 
times. Whenever you see a church, as a general thing, yon 
see a mortgage. That mortgage makes an obligation, and 
makes rich men more welcome than moral men. It makes the 
sermons very soft and persuasive, and entirely unlike effective 
Washington correspondence. Add to this mortgage the indis- 
criminate and tremendous emulation of denominations to excel 
in numbers, honors, and dignitaries, — so that it makes all the 
difference in the world whether our Senator "be a Baptist or a 
Methodist, and none whatever whether he be a brave statesman 
or a rapacious hypocrite, — and we have a part of the blighting 
insensibility of the times to personal character. The great de- 
nominations move along like the great parallel railway corpora- 
tions, and the most parvenue corporation ' makes the most 
splutter. If George Whitefield lived in our day, and had the 
spirit of much of the denominationalism and corporate morality 
we see, he would have preached as follows, in place of that cel- 
ebrated sermon he once made on the non-sectarianism of 
Heaven : 

" ' Father Abraham, whom have you in Heaven ? Have you 
any Baptists there ? 

"'None!' 



206 . - CRIMES AND FOLLIES. 

" ' Have you any Episcopalians there ? ' 

" '.None.' 

" l Have you any Methodists there ? ' 

" ' None.' 

" ' Have you any Presbyterians there ? ' 

" < None.' 

" ' Whom have you there, Father Abraham ? ' 

" ' Chiefly members of Congress, vouched for by the Evangel- 
ical Society !" ' 

Such are some of the records of malfeasance, temptation, and 
folly in modern Washington. To collect these scandals and 
put them into a book is not the most agreeable form of compo- 
sition, but the people must know these things in order to be 
advised of the dangers surrounding the precious and blood- 
bought federal state in which are comprised all our hopes, op- 
portunities, and blessings. Around the state lie heaped the 
highest exploits, the noblest thoughts, the dearest sacrifices, 
and the bloodiest crimes of man's long transmigration. With 
all the material progress and the liberalization achieved by the 
past century, the state is still our all. In particulars it is little 
unlike the states of the past ; two furious parties' struggle in 
its porticoes. When at the highest prosperity it seems nearest 
destruction. The most democratic sacrifices for it often turn 
it to be our most formidable tyrant. It is strengthened by re- 
volt, purified by poverty, and corrupted by success. It is worst 
when most glorious, feeblest when widest, most endangered 
when most content. And still we labor upon our 'Babel, know- 
ing all this, because, though we can never build it into heaven, 
we will never build it downward. Build upon it we must, for 
while it is our tower, it is also our home. If it shall so hap- 
pen that heaven, to mock our pride, must shatter this tall 
fabric, and by some destiny of confusion scatter its builders, 
still will its ruins be a part of the earth, and its memory a 
chapter of man. 

It is the most democratic experiment ever attempted by a 
religious people upon the newest and widest area. Like every 



PERILS SURVIVED. 297 

experiment, its materials were of more consequence than its 
chemists ; out of the conditions of the ground, the period, and' 
the mingling people, the government fashioned itself upon the 
prevailing mind of the new state. Sovereignty was conceded 
to begin in the people ; government was intrusted to their rep- 
resentatives, and justice was set apart, without the passions, 
but within the reach of all. To break the force of local whirl- 
winds, parts of the state were decreed supreme in things of 
neighborhood right, and preserving the outlines of their origin 
and tradition. Two spontaneous parties stepped forth from the 
crowd to be the rival champions of this new state, and while 
each of them has at times resisted the other even to violence, 
both have been alternately and equally the rescuers of the 
state, and the state from the people. The country has survived 
every peril. Its young career is written in letters of white, 
upon the debit side of the world. Too precious not to be even 
in peril, too nicely balanced not to be temporarily swayed to 
injustice and license, it is yet far from the condition predicted 
of it by Fisher Ames, who said, " we were fast becoming too 
large for union, too sordid for patriotism, and too democratic 
for liberty." 



CHAPTEE XXII. 



THE SUPREME COURT AND LOCAL JUSTICE AT WASHINGTON. 

The old city hall of Washington has been the seat of Crim- 
inal, Common Law and Equity Courts of Columbia since its 
completion. In the rear stands the jail, near by the site of its 
predecessor. The penitentiary of the District, at Arsenal Point, 
was torn down after the conspirators against the life of Pres- 
ident Lincoln had been confined and hanged there, and felons 
for long terms are now sent to Albany penitentiary. A Reform 
School is, at the present writing, going up on the site of Fort 
Lincoln near Bladensburg. There are five judges on the Dis- 
trict bench, and the Court, as a United States Court, has wider 
jurisdiction than any District Court in the Union. The major- 
ity of the Judges have of late received their places for politi- 
cal services in remote parts of the country. The police system 
of Columbia is regulated by five Commissioners, and admin- 
istered by a Major and Superintendent. There are nine station 
houses. The Capitol police constitute an independent force at 
the Capitol edifice and grounds, numbering about forty private 
watchmen, presided over by a Captain. There are many com- 
missions and minor courts sitting in the city, and the Court of 
Claims in the Capitol building is organized with five judges. 
A grand police court was established in 1869. The police 
court, partaking of its political origin and style of associations, 
has never enjoyed great confidence in the District. 

The Department of Justice is the name of the reorganized 

(298) 



.THE SUPREME COURT. 299 

Attorney General's office. The Attorney General presides over 
it ; there are a Solicitor General, and two Assistant Attorneys 
General. Solicitors in three of the Departments, and an Ex- 
aminer of claims for the State Department. 

The Supreme Court of the United States sits in the Capitol 
Edifice, and it consists of nine Justices', a Clerk, a Marshal, 
and a Reporter. For each Justice there is a Judicial circuit, 
covering a portion of the Union. 

There is one day at Washington when our Government loses 
its democratic form, and puts on the garments and solemnity 
of its monarchical original. That is the opening day of the 
Supreme Court of the United States. 

The precinct of the Supreme Court has an atmosphere and 
a silence about it .which cannot fail to strike the stranger here, 
even when Congress is sitting. As you pass between the Senate 
and the House of Representatives, by that long arched corridor 
which traverses the entire length of the former Capitol, you 
come to a series of rooms which are haunted in their'lobbies by 
no loiterers, lighted by one single concave skylight, a dark and 
avoided place, with closed doors, with a policeman near by to 
say, " walk quietly," " pass on," " the Court is sitting." And, 
perhaps, while you pause inquisitively in the gloom, a rosewood 
door in the corridor opens, a Marshal cries : " Make way for 
ihe Honorable the Judges of the Supreme Court." And all 
bystanders falling back, nine venerable men, of portly girth 
and ascetic countenances, led by one sanctified face, cross the 
corridor and disappear behind a second rosewood door, which is 
closed by a negro, funereal as a colored Baptist preacher on 
immersing day. The effect of this procession on the casual 
mind is, that somebody is going to' be hanged or buried alive, 
and I have always noticed that any vagrant negroes waiting 
near, slink off with manifest perturbation, as if they were pre- 
sently to be seized and handed over to the Holy Inquisition, and 
burned up with their photographs in Fox's Book of Martyrs. 

The officials of this portion of the Capitol, also, are quite 
different from the smart, intriguing or parasite-looking persons 



800 THE SUPREME COUET. 

who belong to the legislative departments. The Clerk has been 
here forty-two years ; the Master of the Robes appears never to 
have been born at all, but to belong to a sort of judicial anti- 
quity ; old colored men of a . former generation, whose, lives 
heaven has bountifully lengthened out, because not even heaven 
could replace them, keep the ante-rooms and go upon the errands 
with a consistent shuffle, and with shoulders bearing a vast 
responsibility. Rip Van Winkle, when he got up on the moun- 
tains amongst the gray-faced pirates, found just such a lot of 
cheerful ancients as constitute the helpmates of the Supreme 
Court. The furniture of this part of the Capitol, also, is of a 
material and style not current in the rest of the building. We 
see no black walnut chairs, no oiled sideboards or desks, nothing 
whatever of the smart and patented forms of iron notable in 
the wings. Everything here is rosewood or mahogany, built at 
a time when the wood was well seasoned, when we had no 
affectations of Etruscan, or modern Italian, or Arabic forms, 
and followed the classics or simplicity. The furniture, indeed, 
is what remains of the old Capitol, and the old life of the 
Republic — sofas, often covered anew, within whose frames the 
brethren of John Marshall sat ; high-backed chairs, which have 
borne up the snake-like saintliness of Aaron Burr, or George 
Clinton's solid old age. The desks, the book-cases, the tables 
are the same which belonged to the United States Senate in 
former days ; for, until the completion of the present grand 
Senate Chamber, the quarters of the present Supreme Court 
were occupied by the Senate, and the Court possessed what is 
now the . Supreme Court library, directly beneath its present 
Chamber. We shall see further on, that the form of the rooms 
is peculiar, and in keeping with its mystery and respectability. 
The link between the heroic past and our burlesquing pre- 
sent was, until recently, the Marshal ; for attached to this Court 
is a Clerk, a Marshal, and a Reporter — all of them officers 
supposititiously removed from partisan influence, and there- 
fore honorable as the highest positions of merely transient 
occupation. To be Clerk of the Supreme Court is to be in better 



THE SUPREME COURT. SOI 

regard socially, and in better self-esteem, than to be Clerk of 
Congress, or even Secretary of the Senate ; for latterly, par- 
tisanship has laid hands upon the Senatorial places, and com- 
prised them in the general scramble of honors. The Marshal 
of the Supreme Court is now Mr. John G. Nicolay, long Secre- 
tary of Abraham Lincoln, and successor of Mr. Richard C. 
Parsons, of Cleveland, Ohio, who had been a Speaker of Assem- 
bly, Consul to Rio Janeiro, and had filled other places of trust, 
and who was the friend of Governor Chase before he became 
Chief Justice. While his fine straight figure and scrupulous 
dress seemed like a gorgeous veneering upon this funereal piece 
of furniture, he had yet elderly tastes in upholstery, and a good 
eye for respectable effects, which has made the new fixings of 
the Court a match for past patterns. Closer inspection proves 
that, if peculiar, the judicial apartments are still the most com- 
fortable and inviting in the edifice, tawdry 'in nothing, and 
apparently copied from the solid and substantial interiors of 
English Judicial halls, while much of the rest of the Capitol is 
decorated after the worst French models, in stencils, mouldimgs, 
florid carpetings, and " loud" styles of furniture. It is the 
difference between Mount Vernon and Fiske's Opera House 
office. 

The Marshal takes us, before the opening of the Court, into 
his own exquisite little room, in ground-plan like the section 
of a dome, lighted by one large window which opens upon the 
noble portico of the Central Capitol, and in the concavity at 
the foot stands a most graceful marble mantel and fire-place, 
slender in its traceries, as if of vegetable growth. The floor 
is covered with a velvet office carpet, whose prevailing tint is a 
rich golden brown, and the pattern is in miniatures. A bust 
of Chief Justice Chase, and a proof copy of Marshall's Lincoln, 
adorn the walls. A rosewood washstand and table, a safe and 
chairs, complete the equipment, and it is such a room as 'one 
with some grand literary intention would wish to be imprisoned 
in for the remainder of his life. The dimensions of this room 
are twenty-five by ten feet, with a most noble ceiling in height, 



302 THE SUPREME COURT. 

and of so simple moulding and proportions, that it might be 
the chamber of Apollo himself. 

The Marshal of this Court is its executive officer; he serves 
its processes personally or by deputy, and makes the disburse- 
ments for its upholstery, and is its- ceremonial officer, like the 
Gentleman-Usher to the Black-Rod in the House of Lords. His 
salary is $4,000 a year. 

Next we visit the private room of the Attorney-General of 
the United States, by crossing a vestibule carpeted in velvet 
also, and evading the Marshal's door, to the hall of the Supreme 
Court. In a nook behind the Judges' platform is the most 
lovely resting place in "the world, its furniture a rosewood secre- 
tary, one soft high-backed chair, one other chair, and a fire- 
place ; a luxuriously warm carpet covers the floor, and a tall 
window peeps out upon the portico and its statuary. "While 
the .Court is sitting, the Attorney-General must spend much of 
his time here, convenient to his interests in the Court. He 
has $6,000 a year, three clerks, and a messenger. The dimen- 
sio»s ol the Supreme Court Chamber are seventy-five feet 
chord, and forty-five feet in height ; beneath it is the valuable 
law library, occupying the old Supreme Court Chamber. 

The present Court Chamber is the noblest apartment in pro- 
portion and architecture, considering its small size, in the 
United States, and claimed by connoisseurs to be the most beau- 
tiful court-room in the world. Until the winter of 1860 it was 
the historic Senate Chamber, and it gave up its legislative func- 
tions at the brink of the new national era. It is. resonant to 
the reverent man, with the echoes of fifty years of republican 
eloquence, and it is one of the few apartments which seem 
worthy and, indeed, almost conscious of their associations. 
Imagine the interior of one-half of a low dome, — the floor of 
a semi-circle, and along the diameter,, upon a raised platform, 
the cushioned high-backed seats of the Judges, with the apex 
of the half dome just above the middle chair, where the Chief 
Justice is to sit. The height of the dome above the Chief 
Justice is forty-five feet, the greatest width of the room is sev- 



THE SUPREME COURT. 303 

enty-five feet, and of course its transverse line is just half this 
distance. The whole floor is carpeted with the same rich gold- 
en-brown medallion which we have seen on the Marshal's 
floor, and this gives modern warmth and. strength of color to 
the fine classical architecture of the room itself, which is of 
unique purity. Behind the Judges a screen of Ionic columns 
of green breccia, with white marble capitals supports a most 
airy gallery, over which the daylight streams through a soft 
curtain of crimson, giving a delicate tint to the stuccoed panels 
in the domed ceiling, and flooding the floor with the grateful 
light of perpetual autumn. On the wall in front of him, every- 
where equidistant, the Chief Justice can see, set upon consoles, 
busts of each of his predecessors save Taney — and admirable 
.names and faces are they, with concentrated eyes regarding 
him, their living suggestor: Jay, Eutledge, Ellsworth, Mar- 
shall. Had ours been a republic with an elective life-magis- 
trate, perhaps the number of these Judges would have rep- 
resented the number of administrations we should have had — 
six instead of eighteen. 

Before the Judge is a narrow bar and railing, with crimson 
screen ; there are nine chairs ; on either hand are doors of 
official entry and exit, and opposite the main doors for specta- 
tors. The Clerk, reporter, and crier have desks beneath the 
Judges' ; the main central area of the court-room has a line of 
baize-covered tables, with the chairs of attorneys interspersed, 
and within the bar are two short rows of chairs for spectators 
or witnesses, while without it is a cushigned bench for mere 
listeners or intruders, but seldom are these seats filled, for 
there is nothing of dramatic intensity to be seen or heard in 
the Supreme Court. It is a tribunal of ultimate authority 
within the- region of pure law, and does but listen to counsel, 
and express judgment after the calm manner of blind Justice 
herself. • 

When a stranger of an uneducated eye enters this Supreme 
Court-room, he feels the sincerity, so to speak, of its atmos- 
phere and influence, after being stunned, confused, and bewil- 



804 THE SUPREME COURT. 

dered by the innumerable new and frequently meretricious 
objects of the great bulk of the Capitol. At a glance he per- 
ceives all that is, the repose of the place relieves his eye, and 
whatever is said, though without ornament or earnestness, is 
impressed upon his reason. So it happens that quite, a dull 
man can sit here attentively for an hour to hear an application 
of argument to law, while the boldest philippic in the House 
of Representatives would impress him like the eloquence of a 
great bell hammer. The dimensions of the hall dignify the 
human figure, and its acoustic properties are magical. 

The Marshal leads the way across the platform of the Judges. 
"We stop awhile to try the effect of a rest in the chair of a 
learned Judge, and it is wonderfully introductory to sleep. One 
of the Judges said sometime ago that the greatest trial he had^ 
was to keep awake. 

". The proceedings of the Court are so quiet and rational," 
he said ; " so seldom can one hitch, or smile, or be diverted, 
that often, after sitting up till 1 or 2 o'clock, reading upon a 
case, or writing a decision, I feel a constant fear of falling to 
sleep." 

On the side of the court-room opposite the Marshal's office 
is. the " Judges' Walk," a softly carpeted hall, without furni- 
ture or ornament, through which, preceded by a Deputy Mar- 
shal, the whole bench, in single file, enter upon or depart from 
their sittings. The shape of this hall is polygonal, with the 
side nearest the Court convex. A rosewood door closes this 
walk from the great corridor of the Capitol, across which we 
are led by the Marshal, and a bell at the rosewood door oppo- 
site calls up the Master of the Robes, a negro gentleman of the 
olden time, with law and frost showing venerably in his combed 
wool. He is dressed in statesman's black, and knows a lawyer 
from any other sort of a gentleman, and a Judge from a law- 
yer. It is needless to say that he does not know politicians at 
all. He recognizes them as necessary evils ; their salutations 
he may reply to; but there is an expression in his elderly, 
wrinkled face, and demure eye, which says plainly as a sermon: 



THE SUPREME COURT. 305 

" This acquaintance goes no further ! " What reporter or 
author ever held an "interview" with this reverent old bach- 
elor in the law ? He probably never spoke to a newspaper 
man, or a literary man in his life ; for he has descended to us 
from that period when Journalist forebore his iconoclastic hand 
from jurists and from statesmen, when duels were fought with- 
out published comment, and errors of speech or appetite found 
no Cerberian scribe near by, to bark the frailties of greatness 
around the world. Yet, what delicious pinches of original 
anecdote he may have to tell ; what titbits of hearsay, and 
morsels and giblets of incident to enliven a dozen books of 
biography; for he has smoothed with his own hand the wrinkles 
from the robes of thirty years of Justice and of Justices. 

Behind the door of the room which we have entered hang 
the long silken gowns of the Judges of the Supreme Court. 
There is one learned Judge, living in one of the leading West- 
ern States, whose robe requires fourteen yards of black silk to 
encompass his ample form, and as all the Judges pay for their 
own gowns, here is a small matter of seventy dollars to come 
out of the salary of a blind man — all Judges being blind. 
Every Court-day morning, the standard-bearers of our juris- 
prudence must have this black flag run up on them by their 
colored attendant. The gowns are buttoned up- the back, and 
reach to the boots, and their capacious sleeves fall in many a 
learned fold to the wrist. The likeness they bear in these 
clerical garments to the College of Cardinals, led •an Irish gen- 
tleman from Milwaukee to say that he saw the President and 
the rest of the government going to mass as " illigant" as 
Cardinal Wiseman himself. Not less extravagant have been 
tlie ultra-democratic expressions of some Republican partisans, 
who, during the Impeachment trial, and while the Supreme 
Court was considering the Reconstruction cases brought before 
it, were loud in their denunciation of this bench as a set of 
aristocrats, wearing" Monarchical costume." The cosmopolitan 
and philosophic mind of General Butler led this sentiment ; 
and so high did the feeling go that I expected daily to hear of 
20 



306 THE SUPREME COURT. 

a mob rushing on the Judges as they went to open Court, 
throwing them down on the marble floor, and then and there 
stripping them to their boots and breeches. There is really no 
need for this costume; but what Judge cares to lead in a -move- 
ment for its abolition ? The Judges sit for life, so that there 
is no new bench coming in at any one time ; the old Judges' are 
thus used to the costume, and the new one does not wish to be 
a meddler. It is too small a subject for a jurist to consider, 
and too big a one for an outsider to influence. 

The room into which we have come is the Judges' " robing 
room," a long, lofty, and imposing apartment, carpeted by a 
large-figured tapestry, in tolerably bright colors, and lighted 
by three lofty windows, which are shaded with crimson damask 
curtains. A beautiful marble mantelpiece, of an old pattern, 
stands in the middle of one of the wide sides, and facing this, 
across the width of the room, is the high-backed hair-cloth 
chair of the Chief Justice. At his right hand is a long table, 
with chairs reaching down it, and stationery, paper knives, 
etc., for each judge. The judges are careful of their stationery, 
unlike congressmen, and many of the utensils are quite worn, 
while I never saw a congressman resume his old implements 
at the beginning of a new session. Thus it happens that, 
including the salaries of the judges, the expenses * of the 
Supreme Bench of the United States are' less than those of 
any United States Circuit Court which exists. 

Between the Chief Justice and the fire is a hair-cloth dais, 
or bordered lounge, low and without a back, apd each of its 
three seats is nearly a good square in surface. This accom- 
modates the three Daniel Lamberts of the bench, and I am 
' told that the Supreme Court has never been without a large 
proportion of Colossuses upon it. Wanted, somebody to 
explain the reciprocal nature of victuals and law, appetite and 
justice ! On the mantel is an ebony clock ; on the other side 
of the fire are two other huge lounges ; a couple of antedilu- 
vian escritoirs, such as Noah might have furnished the ark 
with, occupy corners. The gas hangs respectably. 



THE SUPREME COURT. 307 

This is the retiring room of the judges, their place of 
assemblage, and their parlor. Its end window commands the 
terraces, and a fine view of the City of Washington. This 
room was long the chamber of the Vice-Presidents of the 
United States, and it bears out the air of that middle period 
of our history between the aristocratic and the commercial 
age. 

Opening off the robing room is the office of the Clerk of the 
Supreme Court, Daniel Wesley Middleton, a narrow apart- 
ment, ornamented with an oil painting of his predecessor in 
the clerkship, and a portrait of a long-departed justice. Here, 
also, and in the next and larger room, where the half-dozen 
assistant clerks have desks, the furniture is old and picturesque, 
and much of it was formerly used by the Secretaries of the 
Senate. This series of rooms looks out upon the city, and the 
terraced gardens of the Capitol. Mr. Middleton is the bea'u 
ideal of an old office-holder, and, as I have said, he has been 
here forty-two years, or since the era of Van Buren. He has 
saved a pleasant fortune, is highly respected, is full of bon 
hommie and reminiscence, and seems capable of surviving 
forty-two years of jurisprudence to come. 

All the above rooms lie upon the second or main floor ot 
the Capitol, and form a square, cut in half by the great cor- 
ridor ; but, under these rooms is still another series of 
judicial apartments — a law library, a large room where the 
judges retire to read law, and to vote upon their decisions, and 
apartments for bathing, etc. 

The " deciding room " is large, carpeted, tolerably gloomy, 
and furnished with the same marble pattern of fireplace and 
furniture, while shelves of books surround it, and a large table 
extends down the centre. Seated at the head of the table, the 
Chief Justice presides, while decisions are being debated. 
Nearly 170 decisions were rendered during the last session, 
beginning in December, 1868, and the judges have (in the 
words of an official) to work " like dogs," reading, hearing, 
writing, conferring, so that they have been at last relieved 



308 THE SUPREME COURT. 

from their immense circuit duty, and will, hereafter, sit seven 
months of the year at Washington. 

At the novel time of opening court, the justices' filed to 
their chairs, and the crier made announcement : 

" Oyez ! Oyez ! All persons having business before the 
Supreme Court of the United States are requested to draw 
near and give attention, for their honors, the Justices of the 
Supreme Court, are approaching to take their places upon the 
bench. God save the United States." 

Here the Deputy Marshal bows in the Court ; gravity takes 

the place of bustle, and the highest tribunal is waiting for a 

quorum. 

. The only scandal attending the Supreme Court in recent 

' times was the selection of two justices in 1S70 to reverse a 

former decision on the subject of legal tender payments. 

The Local District Bar is made up of a hundred or two 
hundred lawyers. Some of them are fair, some shrewd. 
Dauclge is the head of the b f ar. Bradley, senior, does business 
now in a weak way through his son, a fat, curly-haired, 
amiable young man. Old Bradley is rich, venomous, played- 
out, though he can still wriggle a little, like the tail of a snake 
till sundown. The sun of slavery is set. The strut which 
poor human nature gave itself because it could lick a nigger 
if it wanted to, is degenerated to a grovel. Wide lie' the poor- 
house doors. The sons inherit the thirst of their fathers. 
Chiefly, and out of the distilled blood of Africa, the cup is 
benzine, which is burning up the residue of the rebellion. As 
it was said three thousand years ago,' so still it must be said, 
" The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether !" 

" Ned" Price, is one of the oddities at the bar of the Dis- 
trict. Price used to be a prize fighter, and like all retired 
pugilists he opened a Faro Bank in Washington. Being a fel- 
low of adventure and natural talent, he familiarized himself 
with two or three foreign languages, and finally studied law in 
/< the office of Carusi, the son of an old dancing master hero. 
He passed the examination and was admitted to the bar. So 



the supreme court. 809 

that, next to divine or religious influence, a good round head is 
the best redeemer of one's self. Price may take a " stake" now 
and then to this writing, but I think not. He is a stalwart and 
amiable rough, standing up like a bull, and smiling like a broad 
sear. 

Dick Merrick is the light tragedian of the bar — the stage- 
struck attorney, who loses sleep unless he makes a speech 
between the rising of the sun and the going down thereof. 

Philip Barton Key used to be District-Attorney of this Court. 
He once had before him a man who slew another for debauching 
his home, and his labors to convict the other were long and 
protracted. It being proved that the party killed was a profes- 
sional seducer, Key made a speech to his memory, concluding 
with : 

" No longer seek his merits to disclose, 
Nor draw liis frailties from their dread abode, — 
There they alike in trembling hope repose, — 
The bosom of his Father and his God." 

In a few months the didactic seducer was himself made a 
street spectacle of retribution. The Sickles trial happening in 
this old court room, was the social witches' meeting before the 
Rebellion. Stirring up the poison cauldron of a woman's dis- 
honor and a Capital's rottenness, the demons and hags collected 
there, went off on a broomstick to debauch the Thanes and 
Clans of the nation to treason — Ould and Winder to starve 
prisoners ; some here, some there. Double, double, toil and 
trouble. 

One of the longest and most remarkable trials here, was that 
of the case of Tillotson Brown's widow. She had been the 
mistress of Brown for many years, and had a daughter grown 
up, and, I think, married. She proved that Brown had married 
her at last, and the legitimacy of the daughter came up. Tillot- 
son Brown was brother to Marshall Brown, now a neighbor of 
General Grant, and one of the owners of the valuable Brown's 
Hotel property, and Marshall Brown contested the girl's legiti- 
macy on behalf of the rich estate. This opened up the vile 
particulars of a delicate question, and trial after trial prolonged 



310 THE SUPREME COURT. 

the stench of the case. At last the widow won it, and she 
lives now, within view of the court room, in one of the most 
sumptuous residences of "Washington. Few who pass it, and 
see the carved bombshells upon the brown stone balustrade, 
know the social explosion that happened around that dwelling. 
The carriage goes and comes ; the yard is full of flowers ; 
canary and mocking birds sing in the windows. This is Wash- 
ington. This is the world ! 

The town is changed for the better now. People go to church, 
and notably to the churches of dominant New England faiths, in 
greater numbers and gravity than they used. The low places are 
barred fast of Sabbaths. Men keep at home after tea time, and 
family life has one quiet night in the week. 

To return to Senator Drake and the Court of Claims, of 
which he is Chief Justice. That Court sits under the library 
of Congress, in the Capitol Building, and has five Judges, four 
of them placed there in 1863, when the number and the juris- 
diction were increased. The venerable David Wilmot, the 
ardent Pennsylvania free trader, has been replaced upon this 
bench by Samuel Milligan, 1870. The retiring Chief Justice 
Joseph Casey, is a native of Maryland, but he represented the 
Harrisburg (Pa.) District in Congress, twenty years ago. The 
other Justices, Peck, Nott, and Loring, are all grave, judicial 
men, who have served faithfully for smaller salaries. Judge Peck 
lives at Georgetown. Judge Nott has just been able to build 
himself a small, tasteful residence here. This Court was hooped 
round with safeguards from the beginning, and its record is 
believed to be dutiful and honorable, a strict equity tribunal, 
operating under the laws, and responsible, in test cases, to the 
ruling of the Supreme Court. It was especially provided in the 
terms of its organization, that members of Congress should 
not practice before it. 




MOUNT VERNON. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



A PICTURE OF MT. VERNON IN 1789. 

On a Tuesday morning, the 14th of April, 1789, a venerable 
old gentleman, with fine eyes, an amiable countenance, and 
long, white locks, rode into the lawn of Mount Vernon, coming 
from Alexandria. Two gentlemen of the latter town accompa- 
nied him. It was between 10 and 11 o'clock. A negro man 
sallied out to take the nags, and the old gentleman, entering 
the mansion, was received by Mrs. Washington. 

" Why, Mr. Thompson," said the good lady, " where are you 
from, and how are your people ? " 

" From New York, Madame," answered the old man. " I 
come to Mount Vernon on a good errand, for the country at 
least. The General has been elected President of the United 
States under the new Constitution, and 1 am the bearer of the 
happy tidings in a letter from John Langdon, the President of 
the Senate." 

The General was out visiting his farm, however, and the 
guests were entertained for two or three hours, as we take care 

(311) 



312 MOUNT VERNON. 

of our visitors in the country nowadays. A glass of the Gen- 
eral's favorite Madeira, imported in the cask, was probably not 
the worst provision made for them, and ,the cheerful gossip of 
Mrs. Washington, who had known Mr. Thompson, and visited 
his house in Philadelphia, helped to enliven the time. This 
grave and respectable old man was the link between the new 
Government at New York, and the new Magistrate at Mount 
Vernon. Charles Thompson had been the Secretary through 
all its eventful^ career of the Continental Congress which had 
directed the cause of the Colonies from desultory revolt to 
Independence and to Union, and now he had ridden over the 
long and difficult roads to apprise the first President of the 
Republic of the wishes of his countrymen. At 1 o'clock, Gen- 
eral Washington rode into the lawn of Mount Vernon,' in ap- 
pearance what Custis, his adopted son, has described : 

An old gentleman, riding alone, in plain drab clothes, a 
broad-brimmed white hat, a hickory switch in his hand, and 
carrying an umbrella with a long staff, which is attached to his 
saddle-bow. The umbrella was used to shelter him from the 
sun, for his skin was tender and easily affected by it's rays. 

Washington greeted Mr. Thompson with grave cordiality, as 
was his wont, inquiring for his family, and divining already 
the object of his visit, broke the seal of John Langdon's official' 
letter. Dinner followed, and, while the visitors retired to con- 
verse or stroll about the grounds, the President-elect wrote a 
letter to the President of the Senate, and sent' it forthwith to 
the Post-Office at Alexandria by a servant. The letter was as 
follows : ' 

" Mount Vernon, April 14th, 1789. 

" Sir : — I had the honor to receive your, official communica- 
tion, by the hand of Mr. Secretary Thompson, about 1 o'clock 
this day. Having concluded to obey the important and flatter- 
ing call of my country, and having been impressed with the 
idea of the expediency of my being with Congress at as eariy 
a period as possible, I propose to commence my journey on 
Thursday morning, which will be the day after to-morrow." 

This done, the rest of the day passed in conferences between 



MOUNT VERNON. 313 

Washington and his wife, in the preparation of his baggage 
for the not-unexpected journey, while meantime the distin- 
guished guest was amused by the young official household in 
the library and grounds. 

At Mount Vernon was one of the brilliant Bohemians of his 
time, David Humphreys, colonel, poet, biographer, translator 
of plays,, foreign traveler, courtier, and delightful fellow gen- 
erally, with locks like Hyperion, a " killing " countenance, and 
no fortune to speak of; so he had become a permanent guest 
of his old General. To him Thompson was turned over for 
hospitality, and we may suppose them mixing the grog, discuss- 
ing France and the pleasures of the Palais Royale, and guessing 
the names in the new Cabinet with the staid Secretary, Tobias 
Lear, a New Englander, like Humphreys ; while, perhaps, the 
latter recited his tolerably bad rhymes : 

" By broad Potomack's azure tide, 
Where Vernon's mount, in sylvan pride, 

Displays its beauties far, 
Great Washington, to peaceful shades, 
Where no unhallowed wish invades, 

Retired from fields of war." 

The estate Of Washington in this pleasant springtime of the 
year, was well adapted, with its deep shade and broad, peaceful 
landscapes, to be the home of the most honored American. 
Amidst the long grass of its lawn stood the mansion of Mount 
Vernon, such as we behold it now, when it has ceased to be- 
come a home, and has become a shrine, — a low-roofed, painted 
straight edifice, with a high piazza on the river-front, which 
covers the two stories ; and the whole is built of wood, cut in 
blocks to imitate stone. The light columns which uphold the 
porch are also of wood, sanded. There are dormer windows 
in all the four sloping sides of the roof, and a cupola full of 
wasps' nests, surmounts the whole, from which you can see the 
long reaches of the river. The house and immediate out-build- 
ings could be built, at the present price of lumber and labor, 
for about thirty thousand dollars. But nobody would now 



314 MOUNT VERNON. 

fouild such a house. Instead of the high, hollow portico cover- 
ing the whole front of the building, we would now put a low 
veranda, and upper balconies. Instead of imitating stone, 
we would carve the wood into pleasing designs, or use stone 
outright. The interior of the mansion is pleasantly habitable 
to this day, but the naked, white-washed walls look very blank. 
The rooms are generally low of ceiling, and we would think it 
a hardship to live in the room where the Hero of the American 
hemisphere died. Neither gas, nor water-pipes, nor stoves, nor 
wall-paper, nor a kitchen under the mutual roof,— but simply a 
library, a drawing-room, with a carved marble-mantel, and an 
old, rusty, fine harpsichord ; a hall through the house, — a 
reaching up for grandeur with feeble implements ; some plain 
bed-chambers, and a few relics of the great man ; — this is 
Mount Vernon as an abandoned home. The house is now 
above a century and a quarter old, and good for another century, 
if pieced up and restored from time to time. Back of it a pair 
of covered walks reach to the clean negro-quarters, between 
which is seen a rear lawn, with garden-walls on the sides ; and 
across the lawn passes the road to Alexandria and Fredericks- 
burg, so often ridden by the General. The gardens are of a 
showy, imposing sort. He inherited this house from his half- 
brother, and lived in it for fifty years, not counting seven years 
during the Revolution, when he was absent. 

Washington, the son of a second wife, had been married to 
a widow fifteen years when he was put at the.head of the Colo- 
nial armies. He belonged to a military and commercial fam- 
ily; rather New Englanders in thrift and enterprise than like 
the baronial planters round about them. But he was a man 
who grew in every quality, except pecuniary liberality, and no 
book-keeper in Connecticut watched his accounts with more 
closeness, although he was very rich and childless. He was 
the most perfect fruit of virtuous mediocrity, and the highest 
exemplar of a' disciplined life which the scrupulous, the pru- 
dent, and the brave can study. Every triumph he had was a 
genuine one, if not a difficult one. Guizot, the best student of 



. MOUNT VERNON. 315 

his larger life, who had in his eye of neighborhood the careers 
of all the great men of that quarter of a century, including 
Bonaparte, Talleyrand, and Wellington, said- that Washington's 
power came from his confidence in his own views, and his res- 
oluteness in acting upon them ; and that no great man was 
ever tried by all tests and came out so perfectly. Jefferson 
said that he was the only man in the United States who pos- 
sessed the confidence of all, and that his executive talents were 
superior to those of any 'man in the world. He had wonderful 
power in influencing men by honorable sentiments, and he 
never gave a man an office to quiet him or gain him over. His 
character was a little picturesque, but ho was as plain as Lin- 
coln in the parts which he himself prescribed. 

In that day Mount Vernon had all the fame it still retains. 
Engravings of it were common in Europe and America, and it 
was a place of resort for the curious and the eminent, the 
stranger and the politician, because its proprietor stood first 
amongst the private gentlemen of the world. His battles and 
his wisdom, his Republican principles, and the purity of his 
character, recommended him to men as the living model of all 
that Rousseau had delineated — a great unselfish citizen. The 
time had come when the vague, poetic, and earnest aspirations 
of humanity inclined towards this stamp of man. Europe did 
not contain his like. The mighty writers there had filled the 
people with a scorn for kings, while yet they had not created 
one citizen-hero. Distance led them to enchantment with the 
name and person of Washington ; and this was he, at home 
amongst his slaves, with his busy, knitting housewife, on the 
high, sequestered shores of the Potomac. He was aware of his 
fame, for every mail expressed it in the eulogies of authors, 
journalists, statesmen, and even princes. The gravity of pub- 
lic thoughts and things had deepened the shadows of a life by 
temperament reflective, almost austere ; and this planter and 
"farmer had grown judicial in his calmness and equipoise, so 
that he was already a Magistrate in intellect, and his election 
did not, probably, so much as ruffle his feelings. 



316 MOUNT VERNON. 

His mansion was a museum, illustrative of the ordinary 
culture and tastes of a planter of his period. In his parlor, 
doubtless, were these effigies which he had ordered from 
France thirty years before. 

" A bust of Alexander the Great ; another of Julius Caesar ; 
another of Charles XII. of Sweden ; another of the Duke of 
Marlborough, of Prince Eugene of Savoy ; and a sixth of Fred- 
erick the Great, King of Prussia. 

" These are not to exceed fifteen inches in height, nor ten in 
width. 

" Two wild beasts, not to exceed twelve inches in height, nor 
eighteen inches in length. 

■" Sundry small ornaments for chimney-piece." — (Washing- 
ton's directions to his foreign factor.) 

There had been exemplars of Washington at a younger 
period, when the military art was his delight. During the long 
war of the Revolution, his estate had escaped pillage, and what 
had since been collected were mainly the gifts of friends, or the 
reward of arms and eminence. But it appears from what re- 
mains to us, that Mount Vernon was supplied with all the com- 
forts and many of the - luxuries of his time, — a period when 
foreign art and literature were at a high standard, and skill 
and science had begun to look for their patrons below Palaces 
and Ministers 'of State, to the firesides of the prosperous mid- 
dle-class. The social revolution had already transpired in 
America and in Europe. Commerce, education, and accumu- 
lated wealth had insensibly triumphed over ranks and reveren- 
ces. The Democratic age had not fairly dawned, but the men 
lived who were to lead it, and at the head of the middle class 
of conservative Republicans in America stood the men of home- 
steads, broad lands, and large crops, like Washington. They 
were yet to have a few years of semi-supremacy ; but a fiercer 
wave of equality was gathering in the distance, which should 
spare Mount Vernon alone amongst family shrines. 

Washington was rich, but not the richest of the planters. 
At least two Presidents were to succeed him, better burdened 



MOUNT VERNON. 31T 

with money and lands. He was, however, always above the fear 
of poverty, excepting the possible calamities of war ; and the 
personal supervision of as many acres, servitors, and interests 
would be thought onerous in our time. . Yet he w a s ever seek- 
ing, later in life, to increase the revenues of his farms, to lease, 
or to colonize them. 

His property was chiefly in stock, slaves, and land, but the 
land was already showing signs of giving out, and he made 
reference more than once to Pennsylvania and Maryland, 
" Where their wheat is better than ours can be, till we get into 
the same good management." 

Probably no account of his estate can be found so reliable as 
that of the President himself, written to Arthur Young, a cele- 
brated English authority on agricultural matters, just at the 
close of his first term of office : 

" No estate in United America," said "Washington, " is more 
pleasantly situated than this. It lies in a high, dry, and healthy 
country, three hundred miles by water from the sea, and, as 
you will see by the plan, on one of the finest rivers in the 
world. Its margin is washed by more than ten miles of tide- 
water ; from the bed of which, and the innumerable coves, in- 
lets, and small marshes, with which it abounds, an inexhaustible 
fund of rich mud may be drawn, as a manure, either to be used 
separately or in a compost, according to the judgment of the 
farmer. It is situated in a latitude between the extremes of 
heat and cold, and is the same distance by land and water, 
with good roads and the best navigation, to and from the 
Federal City, Alexandria, and Georgetown ; distant from the 
first, twelve ; from the second nine ; and from the last, sixteen 
miles. The Federal City, in the year 1800, will become the 
seat of the r G-eneral Government of the United States. It is 
increasing fast in buildings, and rising into consequence ; and 
» will, I have no doubt, from the advantages given to it by 
nature, and its proximity to a rich interior country, and the 
Western territory, become the emporium of the United 
States." 



318 MOUNT VERNON. 

" The soil of the tract of which I am speaking is a good 
loam, more inclined, however, to clay than sand. From use, 
and I might add, abuse, it is become more and more consol- 
idated, and, of course, heavier to work. The greater part 
is a grayish clay ; some part is dark mould ; a very little is 
inclined to sand ; and scarcely any. to stone." 

" A husbandman's wish would not lay the farms more level 
than they are ; and yet some of the fields, but in no great 
degree, are washed into gullies, from which all of them have 
not yet ^recovered." 

" This river, which encompasses the land the distance 
above mentioned, is well supplied with various kinds of fish 
at all seasons of the year ; and in the spring, with the great- 
est profusion of shad, herring, bass, carp, perch, sturgeon, 
&c. Several valu/vble fisheries appertain to the State ; the 
whole shore, in short, is, one entire fishery," 

" There are, as you will perceive by the plan, four farms be- 
sides that at the mansion-house ; these four contain 3,260 
acres of cultivated land, to which some hundreds more ad- 
joining, as may be seen, might be added, if a greater should 
be required." 

Again, he wrote to a foreign factor, to whom he shipped 
his tobacco, pretty much as Horace Greeley might write : 

" I am possessed of several plantations on this river (Poto- 
mac), and the fine lands of Shenandoah, and should be glad 
if you would ingeniously tell me what prices I might expect 
you to render for tobacco made thereon, of the same seed as 
that of the estates, and managed in every respect in the same 
manner as the best tobaccos on James and York Rivers 
are." 

It was the custom of the Virginian planters, living upon 
tide-water, with the coasts deeply indented everywhere, to ship 
their crops direct from their estates to Bristol or London, 
Washington wrote : " The best Potomac harbor (Piscataway) 
is within sight of my door. It has this great advantage, be- 
sides good anchorage and lying safe from the winds, that it is 



MOUNT VERNON. 319 

out of the way of the worm, which is very hurtful to shipping 
a little lower down, and lies in a very plentiful part of the 
country." 

The manner of putting crops aboard ship was generally by 
the use of scows, which could come up the shallow streams. 
Thus, he wrote : 

" So soon as Mr. Lund Washington returns from Frederick, 
I shall cause my wheat to he delivered at your landing, on 
Four Miles Run Creek, if flats can get to it conveniently." 

A few passages from the correspondence of Washington will 
make plain his mode of life and his business habits. He was 
always minute in his instructions to his superintendent, as 
thus, when closing up a notification to build roads : 

" At all times they must proceed in the manner which has 
been t directed formerly ; and, in making ihe new roads from 
the Ferry to the Mill, and from the Tumbling Dam across the 
Neck, till it communicate with the Alexandria road, as has 
been pointed out on the spot." 

This shows that, though a planter, he was always a man of 
affairs, having personal cognizance of all belonging to him. 

Again : 

" When the brick work is executed at the Ferry Barn, Gun- 
ner and Davis must repair to Doque Run, and make bricks 
there, at the place and in the manner which have been 
directed, that I may have no salmon bricks in that build- 
ing. 

" Oyster shells should be bought wherever they are offered 
for sale, if good, and on reasonable terms." 

As a landlord and creditor, Washington was exacting but 
not harsh. The year he was elected President, he wrote as to 
the collection of rents and debts : 

" Little is expected from the justice of those who have been 
long indulged." 

To his wife, grandchildren, and his own nephews and'nieces, 
he was provident, but still never lavish. In the same year 
as above he wrote to certain needy ones : 



320 MOUNT VERNON. 

" You will use your best endeavors to obtain the means for 
support of G. and L. Washington, who, I expect, will board, 
till something further can be decided on, with Dr. C^aik, who 
must be requested to see that they are decently and properly 
provided with clothes from Mr. Porter's store. He will give 
them a credit on my becoming answerable to him for the pay- 
ment. 'And, as I know of no resource that H. has for supplies 
but from me, Fanny will, from time to time, as occasion may 
require, have such things got for her, on my account, as she 
shall judge necessary." 

These paragraphs convey to us, as fully as the twelve volumes 
of Sparks, the tone of the first Magistrate in affairs of private 
life. His estate > like that of many Virginians, labored under 
disadvantages irom the unthrifty agriculture of slaves, and the 
sort ot improvidence which large estates seem to necessitate. 
Seven years after the period at which this chapter begins, he 
said : 

" From what I have said, that the present prices of land in 
Pennsylvania are higher than they are in Maryland or Vir- 
ginia; although they are not of superior quality, two reasons 
have already been assigned : First, that in the settled part of 
it, the land is divided into smaller farms, and is more im- 
proved ; and, secondly, it is in a greater degree than any other 
the receptacle of emigrants, who receive their first impressions 
in Philadelphia, and rarely look beyond the limits of the State. 
But besides these, two other causes, not a little operative, may 
be added, namely: that until Congress passed general laws 
relative to naturalization and citizenship, foreigners found it 
easier to obtain the privileges annexed to them in Pennsyl- 
vania than elsewhere ; and because there are laws there for 
the gradual abolition of slavery, which neither of the* two 
states above-mentioned have at present, but which nothing is 
more certain than that they must have, and at a period not 
remote." 

Unfortunately the first President faibd to give his active 
support to emancipation, and those laws were delayed" for 
seventy years. 



DECAY OP VIRGINIA. 321 

The neighbors of "Washington were, in some cases, of even 
greater social consideration than himself. Of the adjoining 
State he said : 

" Within full view of Mount Vernon, separated therefrom 
by water only, is one of the most beautiful seats on the river 
for sale, but of greater magnitude than you seem to have 
contemplated. It is called Belvoir, and belonged to George 
William Fairfax, who, were he living, would now be Baron of 
Cameron, as his younger brother in this country (George 
William dying without issue) at present is, though he does 
not take upon himself the title." 

The land of the neighborhood, at the time we have indicated, 
sold at a good price, for he says at Fairfax : 

" A year or two ago, the price he fixed on the land, as I 
have been well informed, was thirty-three dollars and a third 
per acre." 

In the lifetime of Washington, the slow and henceforth 
steady decay of Virginia lands b^egan. His own cherished 
fields steadily declined after his death, and will not now, 
probably, bring as much per acre as when he died. His chief 
crops were wheat and tobacco, and these were very large, — so 
large that vessels sometimes came up the Potomac, took the 
tobacco and flour directly from his own wharf, a little below 
his deer-park, in front of his mansion, and carried them to 
England or the West Indies. So noted were these products 
for their quality, and so faithfully were they put up, that any 
flour bearing the brand of " George Washington, Mount 
Vernon," was said to have been 'exempted from the customary 
inspection in the British West India ports. Such was the 
home of Washington, where he spent the days of his private 
life, and his domestic enjoyments were of a dutiful rather than 
of an enthusiastic sort. 

His mother lived until he was fifty-seven years old, but his 

father died when he was eleven. His wife was rich, but not 

accomplished, and he set free 124 slaves at his death. He 

always rose to the needs of history, and, if his household seems 

21 



822 MOUNT VERNON. 

to lack pathetic and feminine features, that is, perhaps, 
because he was never out of the public regard, because he had 
no children, and also, possibly, because he was unfortunate in 
all his early loves. There are half-a-dozen cases on record of 
his direct rejection by ladies to whom he proposed. 

Bishop Meade, the devout and careful chronicler of Vir- 
ginia, received the following note from one of the family of 
Fauntleroy : 

" My grandfather (who was called Colonel William Faunt 
Le Roy) was twice married. By the first wife he had one 
daughter (Elizabeth), who became the wife of Mr. Adams of 
James Biver, after having refused her hand to General George 
Washington." 

On this the Bishop remarked : " It would seem from the 
foregoing, and from what may be read in my notice of Mr. 
Edward • Ambler and his wife, and from what Mr. Irving and 
other writers have conjectured concerning Miss Guymes of 
Middlesex, and perhaps one other lady in the land, that 
General Washington, in his earlier days, was not a favorite 
with the ladies. If the family tradition respecting his repeated 
rejections be true, — for which I would not vouch, — it may be 
accounted for in several ways. He may have been too modest 
and diffident a young man to interest the ladies, or he was too- 
poor at that time ; or he had not received a college or univer- 
sity .education in England or Virginia ; or, as is most probable, 
God had reserved him for greater things, — was training him 
up in the camp for the defense of his country.' An early mar- 
riage might have been injurious to his future usefulness." 

Much of his life was passed in camps, and in lonely surveys, 
and he made himself by acceptance, instead of choice, a rigid 
historical being. He was worth, during all his married life, 
about $100,000 sterling, not counting his slaves as mer- 
chandise, and it paid him not above 3 or 4 per cent in money, 
or about $20,000 per annum. 

In tin* quiet, almost elegant home, he received many 
princes, exiles, and refined travelers, lured so far by the 



CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF WASHINGTON. 323 

report of his deeds and character. He disappointed not one 
of whom we have any record, and his neighbors, as well as 
those remote, forgot his austerities in his integrity. We could 
have placed no more composed and godlike character at the 
fountain of our young State; and his image, growing grander 
as the stream has expanded, is reflected yet in every ripple of 
the river. We have grown more Democratic since his time, 
and we often wish that Washington had been more pliable, 
popular, and affable ; but it is to be remembered that he was a 
Republican, and not a Democrat. As one of his federalistic 
observers has said of his day : 

" Democracy, as a theory, was not as yet. The habits and 
manners of the people were, indeed, essentially Democratic 
in their simplicity and equality of condition, but this might 
exist under any form of Government. Their Governments 
were then purely Republican. They had gone but a short way 
into those philosophical ideas which characterized the subse- 
quent and real revolution in France. The great State papers 
of American liberty were all predicated on the abuse of 
chartered, not abstract rights." . (Note — Gibbs' Life of 
Wolcott.) 

As an original suggestor, Washington was wise, without 
genius. His designs were all bounded by law, the rights of 
others, and the intelligent prejudices of his time. He told 
Coke, the Methodist, that he was inimical to slavery. The 
better elements of our age were all intelligent, and growing in 
him. But the mighty whirlwind raised by Rousseau, and by 
Jefferson, blew upon the country, and we are what we are, 
while Washington and Lafayette, soldier and pupil, stand the 
only consistent great figures of the two hemispheres, — the last 
Republicans of the school of Milton and Hampden. Such as 
he was, there he lived, and the vestiges of the breaking up of 
the past are all round his honored mansion, — the key of the 
Bastile ; his surveyor's tripod, which first measured the 
streams beyond the Alleghanies, and, at last, the forts which 
the North planted against "Virginia slavery. 



324 MOUNT VERNON. 

The life of Washington at Mount Vernon, subsequent to the 
War, had been lived with that rigid method which he pre- 
scribed for himself at an early age. Temperate, yet not 
disdaining the beverage of a gentleman of that time, and 
dividing the day between clerical and out-of-door duties', he 
had escaped other diseases than those incident to camp-life, 
and he was not fond of the prolonged convivialities of the 
table. His breaklast hour was seven o'clock in summer, and 
eight in winter, and he dined at three. He always ate 
heartily, but he was no epicure. His usual beverage was 
small-beer or cider and Madeira wine. He took tea and toast, 
or a little well-baked bread early in the evening,- conversed 
with or read to his family, when there were no guests, and 
usually, whether there was company or not, retired for the 
night at about nine o'clock. 

He loved Mount Vernon, and had never expressed a desire to 
change its retirement for the concerns of a denser society ; but 
the wish seems to have been fixed in his heart at an early period, 
to see the banks of the Potomac become the seat of a great city. 
Annapolis, Baltimore, and Fredericksburg, were, each a stout 
day's journey from his estate, and Georgetown and Alexandria, 
were his post-office and market places. It had now been fifteen 
years since he had considered the subject of breaking his alle- 
giance to his King and England, and fully half the time had 
been spent away from his estate. 

During more than seven years of the war, Washington had 
visited his pleasant home upon the Potomac but once, and then 
only for three days and nights. Mrs. Washington spent the 
winter in camp with her husband, but generally returned to 
Mount Vernon during his campaigns. 

From this mansion he had departed to take part in the first 
Continental Congress, as one of the four delegates from Virginia, 
when, in the language of a diligent historian, on Wednesday 
morning, the 31st of August, 1774, two men approaching Mount 
Vernon on horseback, came to accompany him. One of them 
was a slender man, very plainly dressed in a suit of minister's 



AN EMINENT COUNCIL. 325 

gray, and about 40 years of age. The other was his senior in 
years, likewise of slender form, and a face remarkable for its 
expression of unclouded intelligence. He was more carefully 
dressed, more polished in manners, and much more fluent in 
conversation than his companion. They reached Mount Vernon 
at 7 o'clock, and after an exchange of salutations with Wash- 
ington and his family, and partaking of breakfast, the three 
retired to the library, and were soon deeply absorbed in the 
discussion of the novel questions then agitating the people of 
the Colonies. The two travelers were Patrick H?ury and 
Edmund Pendleton. A third, " the silver-tongued Cicero" of 
Virginia, Richard Henry Lee, was expected with them, but he 
had been detained at Chantilly, his seat in Westmoreland. 

All day long these eminent Virginians were in council ; and? 
early the next morning, they set out for Philadelphia on horse- 
back, to meet the patriots from other Colonies, there. Will 
Lee, Washington's huntsman and favorite body-servant, was 
the only attendant upon Washington. They crossed the Poto- 
mac at the falls, (now Georgetown,) and rode far on toward 
Baltimore before the twilight. On the 4th of September, the 
day before the opening of the Congress, they breakfasted at 
Christina Ferry, (now Wilmington,) and dined at Chester ; and 
that night Washington, according to his diary, " lodged at Dr. 
Shippen's in Philadelphia, after supping at the New Tavern." 
At that house of public entertainment, he had lodged nearly 
two years before, while on his way to New York, to place young 
Custis, his wife's son, in King's (now Columbia) College. 
With that journey in 1774, began the glorious period of this 
Virginia planter's career. Even at that date, he drew upon 
himself, the admiration of the best of his contemporaries, and 
John Adams — now elected Vice-President with him — wrote to 
Elbridge Gerry — subsequently to be Vice-President with Presi- 
dent Madison — this warm compliment in his favor : 

" There is something charming tome in the conduct of Wash- 
ington. A gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the 
continent, leaving his delicious retirement, his family and friends, 



326 MOUNT VERNON. 

sacrificing his ease, and hoarding all in the cause of his coun- 
try ! His views are noble and disinterested. He declared, 
when he accepted the mighty trust, that he would lay before us 
an exact account of nis expenses, and not accept a shilling for 
pay." 

The history of the war which speedily followed that first Con- 
gress is mainlj the career of Washington. He was a persever- 
ing, a prudent, and a magnanimous captain, and his character 
grew rourid and lustrous as the independence of the country 
advance^. Foreign nobles, countries, and officers did him rever- 
ence, 2nd his behavior was always modest, grave, and yet cheer- 
ful, so that he neither made enemies nor provoked severe 
analysis ; and he set the example of obedience to the civil 
powers, so that his army graduated in the love of law, and their 
transition to citizens became as natural as his own to the First 
Magistracy. If he had not the military genius of Bonaparte, 
he had not also the love of blood and of violence in the same ar- 
bitrary degree. As has been well said," war was to him only a 
means, always kept subordinate to the main and final object, — 
the success of the cause, the independence of the Gountry." As 
a captain, he was subject to none of the petty and irritable jeal- 
ousies so common with conquerors ; and he saw, without chagrin 
and ill humor, the successes of his inferiors in command. Still 
more, he supplied them largely with the means and opportunity 
of gaining them. Only once was he tempted with the anony- 
mous proffer of a crown, and he rebuked it ; and the fomentor 
of the single conspiracy against him wrote in remorse, " you 
are, in my eyes, the great and good man." 

When the armies disbanded, and he had bidden adieu to his 
companions and staff at New York, and delivered up his com- 
mission at Annapolis, he made one or two of those long journeys 
of which he was so fond, and which acquainted him so well 
with the needs and capacities of the future State, and then he 
sought the society of his wife and the congenial pursuits of 
agriculture. But one of his fame and large acquaintance could 
no more be permitted to dwell in solitude. For some time, 



GEN. WASHINGTON AS A PRIVATE GENTLEMAN. 327 

indoed, after his return to Mount Vernon, Washington was in 
a manner locked up by the ice and snow of an uncommonly 
rigorous winter, so that social intercourse was interrupted, and 
he could not even pay a visit of duty and affection to his aged 
mother at Fredericksburg. But it was enough for him at pres- 
ent that he was at length at home at Mount Vernon. Yet the 
habitudes of the camp still haunted him ; he could hardly realize 
that he was free from military duties ; on waking in the morn- 
ing, he almost expected to hear the drum going its stirring 
rounds and beating the reveille. 

As spring advanced, however, Mount Vernon, as had been 
anticipated, began to attract numerous visitors. They were 
received in the frank, unpretending style Washington had deter- 
mined upon. It was said to be pleasant to behold how easily 
and contentedly he subsided from the authoritative Commandqr- 
in-Chief of armies, into the quiet country gentleman. There 
was nothing awkward or violent in the transition. Mrs. Wash- 
ington, too, who had presided with quiet dignity at headquar- 
ters, and cheered the wintry gloom of Valley Forge with her 
presence, presided with equal amenity and grace at the simple 
board of Mount Vernon. She had a cheerful good sense, that 
always made her an agreeable companion, and was an excellent 
manager. She had been remarked for an inveterate habit of 
knitting. It had been acquired, or at least fostered, in the 
wintry encampments of the Revolution, where she used to set an 
example to her lady visitors by diligently applying her needles, 
knitting stockings for the destitute soldiery. While Washington 
was waited upon by scholars, inventors, suggestors, and people 
with projects of material, moral, and intellectual improve- 
ments, — and the two hundred folio volumes of his writings and 
correspondence attest how engaged he was for the five years 
between the peace and the Presidency,— his wife was busied 
with the care of her orphan grandchildren. 

There was another female dear to the newly-elected President, 
and he kept her in filial remembrance at the very moment of 
his greatest promotion. It was growing late in the evening of 



328 MOUNT VERNON. 

the day on which our chapter opens, when "Washington mounted 
his horse, and, followed by his man Billy, rode off intoethe 
woods of Virginia with speed. His destination was Fredericks- 
burg, nearly forty miles away, with two ferries between, — one 
at the Occoquan, the other at the Rappahannock. His purpose 
was to see his old mother, now over eighty years of age, and 
drawing near the grave. It had been long since he had visited 
her, but he could not feel equal to the responsibilities of his great 
office until he should receive her blessing. Few candidates for 
the Presidency in our day would leave a warm mansion, filled 
with congratulating friends, to ride all night through the chilly 
April mists, to say adieu to a very old woman. But thus piously 
the administration of Washington began. He passed old Po- 
hick Church, of which he was a Vestryman, — soon to tumble 
to ruins, — crossed the roaring Occoquan, and by its deep and 
picturesque gorge, where passed the waters of the future bloody 
Bull Run, and, by night, he saw the old churches of Acquia 
and Potomac rise against the sky ; he saw the decaying sea- 
port of Dumfries. In the morning, he was at Fredericksburg, 
and his mother was in his arms. Marches, perils, victories, 
honors, powers, surrendered to that piteous look of helpless 
love, too deep for pride to show through its tears. And the 
President of the new State was to her a new-born babe again, 
— no dearer, no greater. He was just in time, for she had but 
the short season of summer to live, and, like many dying 
mothers, life seemed upheld, at four-score and five, by waiting 
loye till he should come. History is ceremonious as to what 
passed between them, but the parting was solemn and touch- 
ing, like the event. 

" You will see me no more," she said, " my great age and 
disease warn me that I shall not be long in this world. But 
go, George, to fulfil the destiny which Heaven appears to as- 
sign you. Go, my son, and may Heaven's and your mother's 
blessing be with you always." 

Passing from that dear, pathetic presence, the President 
elect, perhaps, did not hear the plaudits of the people in the 



MOUNT VERNON. 329 

streets of Fredericksburg. He rode all day by the road he had 
come, and reached Mount Vernon before evening, having ex- 
hibited his power of endurance at the age of 57, by riding 
eighty miles in twenty-four hours. 

His good wife had made all ready ; the equipage and bag- 
gage were at the door next morning ; and, leaving Mrs. 
Washington and mpst of the household behind, he set out for 
New York at 10 o'clock on Thursday, the 16th of April, 
accompanied by Thompson and Humphreys. The new State 
was waiting anxiously for its Magistrate. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



THE DUELING GROUND AT BLADENSBURG, AND THE GREAT DUELS 

THERE. 

My first visit to Bladenstmrg was made in 1868. I walked out 
from Washington city with a newspaper friend to see the dueling- 
ground. Four miles carried us through the recently raised and 
dismantled breastworks. Then we passed the District line, 
where it runs through the cool and cedary lawn of John C. Rives, 
of the Washington Globe, putting his barn in Columbia, his house 
in Maryland. Here, under a maple tree, we saw old Commo- 
dore Barney's spring, where he drank when wounded at the 
battle of Bladensburg ; across the road the old salt had planted 
his battery; the road descended to the creek and ravine, where 
a bridge, about as long as your parlor floor, gave crossing, and 
on the Washington side ot the bridge, at a bare, grassy dip, in 
the meadow, Decatur and many a man, as vain and brave, fell, 
pistol in hand. It was the dueling ground. 

From a little knoll beyond the bridge, we looked upon the 
village of Bladensburg, and the slope of battle-field that gently 
fell from our feet, to the little sandy running river. The whole 
area of the original battle was not half a mile square, Barney's 
combat being a separate matter, fought on the third reserve 
line. Just by Bladensburg, whose old crook-gabled houses 
came nearly to the water's edge,*we saw the new bridge reach- 
ing out towards us, and a few yards below it, the broken abut- 
ments and piles of the old battle bridge. The new bridge was 

(330) 



THE TOWN OF BLADENSBUEG 331 

about fifty yards long, the old one not more than thirty yards. 
In less than two minutes a man on a run could cross either,, 

Bladensburg itself we could see to be a village built along 
two roads, which forked off at the other end of the bridge, one 
by the stream's bank northward to Baltimore, the other keep- 
ing straight east to Benedict, on the Patuxent river. The 
course of the river was away fro. a the village, south-westward. 
The village contained about three hundred people. The river 
was a shallow creek, now fordable everywhere, except after a 
rain, and running over sands and pebbles. A flat lay on each 
side of it, with bushes and stout old gum and ash trees grow- 
ing therein ; the village also lay on this flat, so low that after 
every rain-storm the people, go muskrating around their back 
yards. Hills lie on each side of the flat, and tie river escapes 
through dogwood and shell-bark thickets. Desolation was 
Bladensburg to look at, and low-lived wickedness to know. 

It stands on the border of the great Calvert property. The 
house of George Calvert, lineal descendant of Lord Baltimore, 
the founder of Maryland, is only two miles out of the village on 
the Baltimore side, — a white mansion a hundred feet long, with 
wings and lofty portico, standing in an estate of two thousand 
acres, much of which is a spacious lawn, guarded by the por- 
ter's lodges, in the English style, and stocked with white deer, 
by George Calvert, more than sixty years ago. 

The old stage coaches, up to the railway era, used to go daily 
from Washington to Baltimore, through Bladensburg, — through 
fare two dollars and a-half in gold, — and in that period the 
town was called thriving. To see the Northern Congressmen 
and their wives go by, the young tobacco planters used to gath- 
er, and while waiting for the stage they fought chickens and 
dogs, or gambled in a bar-room. 

Then this poor abandoned creek was a river, and boats of 
light draught came up to the piers of the old bridge and " load- 
ed" with tobacco. Money was paid down on the spot for the 
virgin leaf, and rum and nigger-driving stood on their deck of 
cards and thought it was a civilization. But steam, like a bolt 



332 THE DUELING GROUND AT RLADENSBURG. 

of lightning, struck this cross-roads Sodom. The railway left 
it to one side, and then the land, when it was ploughed for corn 
and wheat, ran off with the rains and filled up the river. No 
masted boat has been seen at Bladensburg for eighty years. 
Of course the merchants subsided into retailers of candles and 
chiccory. The very old houses grew older with poverty. Had 
it not been for a chalybeate spring just above the town it-would 
have been totally forsaken- This Spring brought now and 
then an idle carriage load of ladies to taste the water, and as 
the village laid just over the district line,' dueling parties of 
politicians came now and then to put up their horses before 
they aimed at each other's hearts. . The young planters lurking 
around the taverns to see these, became mere gamblers and 
debaters by profession at last. The nigger and tobacco had 
their revenge. I doubt that any miserable village in the country 
is so blasted with ignorance and wickedness as this. Blood, 
taken in colder blood, cries out and against it. Not one, but three 
different sites of duels, lie in its environs. The battle of 1814, 
that might have dignified the place, seemed to feel the loath- 
some future of it, and the troops lost heart, and ran like cravens. 
Yet, near the place, was born the Attorney-General and bi- 
ographer of Patrick Henry, Mr. William Wirt. " Happily, he 
moved away ! " said my companion, as we crossed the plank 
bridge. 

Going up into the town — under great, elephant-backed roofs 
of over-lapping, octagonal-shaped shingles, where monstrously 
huge chimneys, perhaps of imported brick, buttressed up the 
gables, by lazy porticoes to private homes where green benches 
invited to a dreary rest, by dogs pursuing pigs in sheer malic- 
iousness, and brutal roosters crowing at the sport, by signs that 
flapped for unre turning customers, and by negro kitchens in the 
rear of every dwelling, with open colonnades of brick between, 
by one sandy, sunny, parched street — we passed the sign-board 
of the deserted " Exchange Hotel," and came to the sign of 
" The Branch Hotel," where Mr. Sutor, proprietor, stood in the 
act of chucking his jack-knife' into his own gable. Near by 



VISITING THE SCENES. 383 

were hitching sheds and stables for traveling carriages that 
come no more. Within was a bar, decorated with two nude 
studies of almond-eyed females, and the valuable portrait »of 
Mr. John Surratt, a young gentlemen who murdered a tyrant 
and gave his own mother up to be hanged. Mr. Sutor, of 
whom I had heard before, was at this time regaling a couple 
of young gentlemen with a humorous depiction of General But- 
ler stealing " spoons," although he called them " spunes." 
The bar-keeper was ' tnus addressing a young gentleman who 
walked to and fro : " Latherby, you mousn't take yer hists so 
airly in the mornin'. The black Jack man'll git ye agin." 

This playful remark I interpreted to mean that Mr. Latherby 
was just getting over a spell of delirium tremens. 

However, after some difficulty in getting Mr. Sutor off the 
Dpoon question, which could only be done by allowing him to 
curse General Butler for five minutes uninterruptedly, he said 
with that familiar leer which implies social " cleverness " in 
Maryland, that he had seen many a " juel," had fed many a 
" jueling " party, and that wounds had been dressed and limbs 
amputated frequently in his parlors. There were persons older 
than himself, he modestly added, living in town, who had seen 
the most famous duels of them all, and he indicated a druggist 
across the way who was present at the celebrated Graves and 
Cilley combat. 

I asked to be given some of the scenes cotemporary with 
these actions. 

" Oh !" said Mr. Sutor, " the seconds and very often the 
principals used to come out yer the night befo' the juel, with 
their friends, and have a high ole Kerouse up stairs., Mos' all 
of 'em got ripe and drunk befo' daylight, and some of 'em ovo- 
slep 'emselves, so they couldn't see no juel at all." 

Here Mr. Sutor laughed very loudly. His friends laughed. 
All laughed. 

" They never told us, of course, about the juel ; but we alius 
knowed it. We could tell. We'd see 'em walk behind the 



334 THE DUELING-GROUND AT BLADENSBURG . 

house and slip across the bridge and, of course, we didn't see 
nothing. Oh ! no. Neither did he see them spunes !" 

Here there was an exhilarating, laugh all round. 

A friend of Mr. Sutor now interpolated some interjective 
contempt for certain Methodists of the Bladensburg region, who 
had tried to stop duelling on their side of the district-line even 
by force. He said they were durned intermeddlers, and didn't 
like fun no-how. 

" They got no ijee of a gentleman's quarrel. They want to 
go to law on a question of honor." 

" They' want them spunes !" said Mr. Sutor, to his own great 
merriment. 

" I tell you, gentlemen," said Mr. Sutor, breaking off, " Bla- 
densburg' s the only complete town in the United States. It's 
all yer. It aint got many spunes, but it's a complete town." 

(Mr. Sutor meant to rest upon the fact that Bladensburg had 
ceased to grow.) 

At this time there were indications that our new acquaint- 
ances wanted less talk and more treating. Insinuations were 
made that a game of gallop, sledge, or draw poker would im- 
prove the spirit. While declining these hospitable invitations 
we saw one of the young Calverts (called here Caulverts) rid- 
ing by on a fine blooded horse. They are capable, recluse far- 
mers, and I believe, have eschewed the religion of their fathers, 
being now hardshell Episcopalians.. 

A last effort to induce Mr. Sutor to give us his reminis- 
cences of the Battle of Bladensburg developed a certain 
memory of* Mr. Sutor having been sent by his father to drive 
home a certain pig,' and while on the way, a desperate shower 
came down, which Mr. Sutor remembered to have " spiled " a 
certain alpaca jacket that he wore. This alpaca jacket was 
a very fine piece of material, being furnished with a peculiarly 
handsome and nondescript gilt button. But what all these 
pigs, jackets, rain storms and buttons had to do with the 
Battle of Bladensburg was still a matter of mystery when we 
bade -Mr. Sutor good-bye. 



THE DUELING GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 385 

" I say ! " said Mr. Sutor, when we got down the street a 
piece, halloing, " You won't try your luck at keyard's ? " 

" No ! thank you ! " 

" And you won't forget them spunes ? " 

We went gladfully out of this manner of village to the old 
dueling ground, very silent and uncommemorated, with a new 
hill-top fort looking over into it, and sat there, reflectively 
thinking over the barbaric years when the vanished master 
was the type of manliness. 

A few remembered incidents stood prominently out. 

Jonathan Dayton, Senator from New Jersey, challenged the 
great De Witt Clinton, Senator from New York, to fight him 
in 1803. Clinton apologized. 

In 1819, just over the district line in Maryland, General 
Armistead T. Mason, Senator from Virginia, was shot dead by 
John M. McCarty, his cousin, in a duel with muskets and ball. 
They stood only ten feet apart. 'Mason deserved his death, 
and so did McCarty. They first challenged each other to fight 
at three feet, then at three inches, and, at last, to sit on a 
powder barrel and blow each other up. 

In 1820, in the. month of March, Stephen Decatur was shot 
dead on this old Bladensburg cockpit, by James Barron, a 
fellow officer. They stood eight paces apart. 

A baser duel was that of Fox and Randall, the latter a 
Treasury Clerk, who seduced the daughter of his Washington 
boarding-house keeper in 1821, and then challenging her 
pitying friend to fight at eight paces, killed him instantly. 

These bloody deeds are little in vogue to-day, since they 
stopped the sale of niggers, and cooled honor down with a 
little wholesome poverty. 

Henry Clay's celebrated duel with Randolph occurred in 
Virginia, above Chain Bridge, at the base of one of the strong 
earth forts erected in the late war. On the site of the combat 
thousands of men have since encamped. It is about nine 
miles from Washington. Clay had previously fought with 
Humphrey Marshall in 1808. Randolph was a novice at this 



336 THE DUELING GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

meeting, which occurred in 1826. The latter was a singular 
piece of talent and vanity, nearly a madman, and intelligible 
only in Virginia. He annoyed Clay, who was Secretary of 
State, by repeatedly attacking the latter from the Senate, 
styling him a blackleg, and charging him with a diplomatic 
forgery. Randolph spent the night before the duel in quoting 
poetry and playing whist, while his will was being amended. 

The next morning, before going to the field, he got nine 
pieces out of bank to make gold seals for his friends, and 
carried them to the ground in his breeches pockets. His pistol 
went off by accident, but at the real interchange of shots he 
fired in the air. Clay took aim at him. Years afterward 
Randolph had the gold seals made, with coats of arms upon 
them. There was a good deal of Kentucky and Virginia 
blatherskite written about this duel. Clay made a fine figure 
in it, seeming to feel regret and intrepidity together as he 
stood up. For the most extended description, see " Benton's 
Thirty Years in tjie Senate." 

The fourth duel of consequence in this country — outranked 
in character only by the deaths of Hamilton, Decatur, and 
Broderick — was fought between Jonathan Cilley of Maine, and 
W. TVGraves of Kentucky, four miles from Bladensburg, on 
the river road, in 1838. The weapons were rifles, the distance 
was ninety-two yards. Henry A. Wise was the second of 
Graves. Cilley was put in a place where the February wind 
blew keenly on him. They both fired twice and missed. 
After each fire Cilley apologized in a manly way, but would 
not humiliate himself. On the third fire, Cilley fell, shot 
through the body, and died in three minutes. There were 
present at this duel, Crittenden (Compromiser) and Menefee 
of Kentucky, Duncan of Ohio, and Bynum of North Carolina. 
Jones of Wisconsin seconded Cilley. Calhoun and Hawes of 
Kentucky were also present. All these were members of 
Congress. Other spectators were two uninvited men, named 
Powell and Brown, and the hack drivers. 

The duel was barbarous in all its associations. Cilley had 



GRAVES AND CILLEY. 337 

offended J. Watson Webb, editor of the defunct Courier and 
Enquirer of New York, in debate, and Graves was one of a 
party of fire-eaters who challenged Cilley because the latter 
would not admit that Webb, his principal, was a man of honor. 
While Graves and Cilley were fighting, Webb and another 
party were scouring the country for them, determined to muti- 
late or kill Cilley any way. The record left by the whole Wqbb 
and Graves party in this duel, — for which I refer you to Loren- 
zo Sabine's Notes on Duels and Dueling,-^is one of persecu- 
tion and murder. The event inflamed the country, and led to 
the first decided stand taken by the North against the atrocious 
principles of the dueling code. 

The next duel of note near Washington was an interchange 
of shots between one Edward Stanley of North Carolina, and 
one Samuel W. Inge of Alabama, Congressmen. The former 
said, in debate, that the latter had little sense and less charity. 
Then they called each other blackguards, and both were prob- 
ably correct. 

In 1852, John Barney of Baltimore, tried to get Mons. Sar- 
tiges, the French Minister, to fight him near the city. 

Two Richmond editors fought at Bladensburg, bloodlessly, in 
1852. They were both named Johnson. 

John C. Breckinridge avoided a duel with F. B. Cutting of 
New York, by apologizing, in 1854. 

To this imperfect list of , duels, there is only one index of 
character : Vindictive vanity. The last single combat in the 
Capital city was Payne stabbing the sick Seward in his bed of 
helplessness, and Booth revenging himself on Lincoln's mor- 
tality. Both these heroic affairs of honor were sequels to the 
braining of Charles Sumner by the honored son of South Car- 
olina. They end that race of high motive, of sensitive courage, 
and of cavaliers of which Bladensburg, as it stands, would be 
properly the capital and the cemetery. 

I paid a very remarkable visit to Bladensburg in 1870, to 
ascertain some particulars of the death of Stephen Decatur. 
My inquiries excited an accommodating spirit, and I soon heard 
the barkeeper cry out : 
22 



338 THE DUELING GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

" Yer's the man that saw Decatur shot ! " said the barkeeper. 

I turned from my supper of fresh herring, caught, "juss 
yer behine de tavern in de branch," and from my roes of fresh 
shad, to look at the man who saw Decatur shot. 

He was a lean, liver-hired old loafer of the village of Bladens- 
burg. His 'kidneys were all dissolved in burning whiskey. 
He wore a wide- slouched hat, poor clothes, the boots of a gen- 
tleman, worn through and patched as frequently as the patches 
in his credit, the gaps in his character. There was a cane in 
his hand, of course, the rake's last sceptre. He looked at me 
with a twinkle of amiability, and a sidewise expression of 
thirst. 

" 1 saw Commodore Decatur mortally wounded, sir. * It was 
on the 22d of March, 1820, sir — forty-nine years ago. My 
God! how time flies. Yes, sir; I'll jine you with a little 
tansy." 

The old man. took off his hat and balanced it on the end of 
his stick, and leaned it against the whitewashed wall. Then 
, he took all his liquor, and asked if I was from the North. 

Marylander ! And from "Worcester County ? . Why, that's 
the gitting-off place," exclaimed the old Bladensburger to my 
answer. And now I know why you take an interest in Deca- 
tur's juel ; for Stephen Decatur was born in Sinepuxent Bay, 
Worcester County, Maryland, ninety years ago. That little 
peninsula of Delaware and Maryland [he called it Maalun], 
called the Easters sho',has projuced some of our biggest naval 
heroes — Decatur, MacDonough, the Goldsboroughs, Dupont. 
And two of 'em were of French descent. Decatur's grand- 
father was a French midshipman from La Rochelle, the last 
stronghold of the Huguenots, who cruised to the West Indies, 
took the yellow fever, and was sent to Newport, R. I., to git 
well. But he fell in love with Prissy Hill there, quit the navy 
of King Louis XV., and, entering our merchant service, died 
soon, poor in Philadelphia. His only son Stephen went to sea, 
married Miss Pine, an Irish girl, became a* naval officer, and a 
privateersman in the revolution, and while he was off fighting 



BLADENSBURG. 339 

the English, the British army entered Philadelphia; his wife 
moved down to Sinepuxent Bay, where Stephen Decatur, the 
first son, was born. He had the three big crosses in him, sir, 
French., Irish, and — " 

" Yankee ? " 

" Yes, sir ! " said the old Bladensburger, " but the Rhode 
Island Yankee was driven out of New England proper, and it 
is a better breed. We had some hope to see Mr. Sprague, of. 
Rhode Island, out on our jueling ground. But I'm afraid I 
have seen my last affair of honor." 

" How old are you, may I ask ? " 

. " I am 61 years, sir. Sometimes I think I remember the 
battle of Bladensburg, but they tell me that's only an idea. But 
when Decatur was shot I was 12 years old. We knew there 
was boun' to be a juel by gentlemen with a naval look to 'em, 
who stopped at our tavern over night. That's the way she 
always did, sir. One party would come from Baltimore-way 
and put up yer all night in Bladensburg. The opposite party 
would drive out from Washington after daylight next day, and 
meet the Bladensburg party in the gully, half a mile toward 
Washington. There they'd fight, and cross the Destreek line 
right afterward to avoid arrest. We boys cut our eyes when 
we saw strangers round town late. Next morning, you'll be 
bound, we was up and hiding in the trees or bushes along the 
edge of the gully. It was Barron's party, sir, that stayed' in 
Bladensburg that night. At a gentleman's house, near by, I 
have heard that some of Decatur's family put up, to be timely 
on hand after the shots were fired. There were a thousand 
stories flying round after the fight, about those minor matters. 
I only know what I saw and was informed." 

I thought to myself how true it was, indeed, that what 
passes perishes, at least to the curiosity. This old parasite and 
ghoul of manslaughter had only expressed in another way the 
apology of Mackenzie to his life of Decatur, that : " The search 
for truth, however sincere, does not always result in its being 



340 THE DUELING GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

found. Experience proves that contemporary history is quite 
as fallible as that of the past." 

I lighted my pipe and purchased for this old-man guide a 
paper of tinfoil tobacco. He entered into some little apology 
upon his fallen condition. 

" We're down tolabul pore in Bladensburg these days, sir. 
They took two things from us, sir, that would ruin any people 
— our river and our niggers. They give us a railroad, and 
that busted us completely. Bladensburg stood before George- 
town or "Washington were thought of, sir. It was called Gar- 
rison's Landing as far back as the year 1700. People round 
here live to this day who can remember vessels clearing from 
the foot of this street for the West Indies and for Liverpool. 
Then the Capital was established close by us, and stages ran 
through to Baltimore, to the number of thirty or forty a day. 
Meanwhile the river began to get shallower every year till our 
port was broken up ; for the soil hereabouts runs off or wears 
into deep gulleys, and we hadn't the Northern knowledge to 
make it stay. What we lost off our land filled up our river. 
Then the railroad was laid thirty years ago, and it broke up 
the briskness of our way travel. Finally, when the land was 
so pore that it wouldn't keep a nigger, superfluous bad luck to 
even our niggers. And, between you and me, sir, as Mary- 
landers, the niggers ain't certainly no wuss off than they was, 
and we are wuss off every way. I'll take some gin, if you're 
agreeable." 

At this time my carriage came up, and, after going through 
the hotel, I made the complete circuit of the village. 

This celebrated tavern is a frame building, with a lawn in 
the rear, a front porch, a bar-room at the end, and the bar- 
room gives access to a stableyard, which is open on the 
side next the street, and has hitching stalls set round 
about. 

At the present day this tavern is the undisputed Capitol of 
Bladensburg, and Bladensburg is the worst town possibly in 
the United States. There are more desperate and more mer- 



BLADENSBURG, AS IT IS. 341 

c.nary to wik on the verge of human exile, but I should say 
that Bladensburg at the present time is altogether the most 
heathen place we have. At night this tavern and its rival 
across the street are filled with relics of barbarism, poor 
wretches who will fight upon a word and cheat without a need, 
debased at all points except upon the solitary imputation of 
cowardice. It is saturated with that blood-thirstiness and 
thirstiness otherwise, which calls and follows to " the field." 
Its proudest recollection is that it was the picked place for 
mortal combat, and yet it was the scene of the most cowardly 
battle ever fought on the American Continent, a battle where- 
in a few British sailors and soldiers slew the militia of all this 
countryside as they ran like dogs, leaving on their flank the 
Capital of the country to be burned and the President of the 
country to be captured. And in the environs of this wretched 
place the bravest and handsomest officer in our navy — " the 
Bayard of the seas," as he was not inaptly called — fell almost 
a carcass in the dirt, with a ball in his bowels and his ball in 
his adversary's hip. 

At this day Bladensburg is in essentials the same village it 
was when Decatur and Barron fought here on a morning in 
March, 1820 — a roadside village of three or four hundred peo- 
ple at the crossing of the East Branch of the Potomac, five 
miles from the Capitol at "Washington. Its principal street 
stretches along a flat floor of sand, thirsty, like its citizens, and 
is, at both ends, stopped by a ford and bridge ; for the branch 
makes a turn round the bottom of the village, and shoots off a 
creek round the top of it. The main turnpike street, therefore, 
on which our old duelists' tavern stands, midway between the 
fords — is a good deal like a village built upon a sand bar or 
river beach. The backyard of those houses which keep the 
same side with the tavern go flatly back to the river. The 
yards of houses across the street scramble up at a small 
degree. Behind these latter houses is another broken street, 
parallel to the first, and both of them at the bottom of the 
town lead into a street at right angles, which passes the branch 



342 THE DUELING GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

by a bridge one way, and the other way leads back through the 
hills into the Chesapeake Necks of Maryland. It was by this 
last road that the British came from their ship at Benedict to 
burn Washington. There are hills on that side of the town, 
and behind them the British formed. Then, charging across 
the old bridge, or shipping up under cover of those old houses, 
they passed the branch, formed on the Washington side of the 
river, and that night moved into Washington. The back lanes 
of this town, and the houses which lie up the green hill-ter- 
races, show large and comfortable yet. The flat main street 
smells of the ague, feels of the rheumatism, and looks of starv 7 
ation. Its grave, hip-roofed, blackened old houses, look in the 
twilight like rows of wrecked hulks along a bar when the tide 
has gone out. In the baking sunshine of the day they look 
like tawny elephants, waiting in two lines to carry up the vast 
delay of cargoes which nevermore shall come to Bladensburg 
piers. Mighty outside chimneys hold themselves and their old 
houses up. The porches hang limp, like the dislocated chins 
of dead men. There are no sidewalks. No wagon moves 
oftener than once an hour through these old waiting rows of 
mansions. There is a shop or two, but the merchant lolls in 
the door and looks where the river used to be for the unreturn- 
ing ships. I have sometimes thought of the perils of towiis 
pitched in the sea, but woe be to the towns which the sea 
deserts, once having fondled them. I never felt the sense of 
isolation in Venice or in Rotterdam, where the water plashes 
against one's house like the sea against his vessel. But in this 
little village, which has lost its river, there seems to have been 
a superstition of bad luck, and the curse came ever since the 
tide forsook it. I felt this myself when I heard of the river 
going away, and I said to my acquaintance, the guide : " By 
the rivers of Babylon we wept." 

I have read a poem about the Deserted Village, but I should 
call this the " Abandoned Village." 

" There was a sossy Methodist preacher here," replied the 
old man, " who undertook to say, just after the war, that our 



BLADENSBUEG, AS IT IS. 343 

people and town were abandoned. He said the jueling ground 
had been the academy of our boys and the tavern their pump. 
I tell you, sir, between us, as Marylanders, that jueling ground 
has been bad for a good many of us. Strangers come to see it. 
It's the sight and park of the village. It fills our boys' heads 
with ideas of taking the chances, and handling weapons, and 
resenting insults. As they can't juel no more, they fight 
cocks behind the tavern now, and skin a stranger, if he comes 
along, with a game of cards. A standing gibbet or gallows 
couldn't have been wuss for us than that jueling ground. 
It'll haunt this neighborhood for ever. The niggers are afraid 
to pass it after night. And do you know," the old man drop- 
ped his voice, " that when I look at our ships gone, the sea 
gone that fetched 'em here, and nothing left but this little 
bloody branch, I feel that yon old jueling ground is somehow 
at the bottom of it." 

. The old man looked as if a chill out of the swampy street 
had struck him. I felt a little shiver of it myself. 

"For look you, sir," he said, "at the bad luck that has 
come to us since the year 1800, when that little gully, half a 
mile from the village, became a human cockpit. (The first 
man known to have been killed there was Hopkins, in 1814, 
but it was a place of jueling almost as early as Washington 
became the Capital, and army and navy and politicians, all 
high-strung, got to be our neighbors). First we lose our ships. 
Then we lose our water, and our wharves stand high and dry 
on land, so that a duck can't turn where a brig used to anchor.. 
Then we lose our good name ; for the British army turns 
Washington in the rear, and makes us a rampart to cover 
their operations. Right over the jueling ground, the Field of 
Honor, our militia cut dirt, and Bladensburg is held account- 
able for the sacking of the Capital. No run of good luck 
begins. We lose the stage coaches. The soil gits poor. Our 
mineral spring that's got no superior in the Middle States, 
attracts nobody. The boys grow up bad. Upon my soul, it 
can hardly be called a calamity that our niggers are 'manci- 
pated." 



344 THE DUELING-GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

" My Bladensburg friend, it is just eighty years since Wil- 
liam Pinkney, of Annapolis, described Bladensburg at the pre- 
sent day in these words : Never will your country be produc- 
tive ; never will its agriculture, its commerce, or its manufact- 
ures flourish so long as they are dependent upon reluctant 
bondsmen for their progress. Even the very earth itself, as 
Montesquieu says, which teems profusion under the cultivat- 
ing hand of the freedom laborer, shrinks into barrenness from 
the contaminating sweat of a slave:" 

We passed, so speaking, the tumble-down stores, saw ves- 
tiges of the ancient piers and bridge, crossed the new bridge 
in the early evening, and saw negroes bare to the thighs, 
wading in the pools with herring nets, plashing the surface 
meantime with rods, to drive the herring in. Beyond the 
bridge the road, by rising undulations, went towards Washing- 
ton — a hard clay road, fenced on either side ; to the left, ran 
meadows down to the sedgy brink of the river ; on the right 
was a mill, and further on a handsome farm and barns. Half 
a mile from the bridge, the road dipped slightly to pass a small 
stone bridge, of one arch. Beneath this bridge a brook, nearly 
dry, had washed a gulch in the clay, to the depth of eight or 
ten feet, and this gulch crossed the road obliquely, washing out 
the fields to the same depth on either side. The gulch was twelve 
feet wide, and to prevent it from carrying off the bridge, heavy 
piles were driven at both ends of this structure. Gulches or 
" washes " like this account for the bold landscapes and barren 
soils round Washington, and it is the opinion oi Mr. Hilgarde, 
of the Coast Survey, that the whole Chesapeake Basin is 
slowly filling up. 

There is no name for the brook which once ran across, not 
under, the road, and was a clear or a muddy stream, as the 
weather might permit. In those days there was no deep ditch, 
as at present, but the brook flowed down a narrow, grassy val- 
ley, which still meanders through the rolling fields by long and 
graceful curves. A piece of dry marsh, it might be called, 
winding through hills, and concealed from observation except 



decatur's mansion. 345 

from the ends. The passenger on the railroad can look down 
the whole length of it now as he rides by, and in some Sum- 
mers he will see cattle grazing in it, in others he will find it 
planted with Indian corn or buckwheat. 

This is the famous dueling ground of Bladensburg. I de- 
scended from the road and stood on the spot where Decatur fell, 
and in no direction could I see any building, except the tip of 
a barn-gable, across the East Branch, three quarters of a mile 
distant. 

" When Commodore Decatur fell yer, in 1820," said the 
eye-witness, " there were trees masking this gully from the 
road, and many trees and bushes growing along its banks. 
The gully itself was clear and grassy as you see it to-day. In 
a carriage passing along the road, you couldn't have known 
anybody to be near by. I was a boy, and remember well ; for 
these things made an impression on me, and I sneaked into the 
bushes and saw the duel happen." 

Before six o'clock in the morning, on the 22d day of March, 
1820, Commodore Stephen Decatur rose from the side of his 
wife and put on his citizen's clothes. She was used to parting 
with him, for in their fourteen years of married life, he had 
gone many times to sea and to battle. He crept softly down 
the stairs, and, passing through his spacious hall, encountered 
only his old negro servant, the companion of his voyages, who 
was alert and acquainted with the purposes of the day. 

The old man had thrown open the windows of the drawing- 
room, and round the walls Decatur saw the trophies and illus- 
trations of his life ; his portraits and the paintings of his most 
celebrated battles ; gold medals and gold swords,' the gifts of 
Congressmen and admiring cities ; articles of virtuoso, and bits 
of oriental furniture, purchased or captured in ports of Barbary 
or on the civilized seas. In Washington City there was no 
more spacious or excellent mansion than his, the President's 
house excepted, and this is demonstrable to the present day, 
where it stands upon the west corner of H street and Lafayette 
Square — a large brick mansion, worthy to be a Republican gen- 



346 THE DUELING-GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

tleman's residence in any generation. He had himself built it 
a few years before out of prize money received from captures, 
and it was the second house he had owned in Washington, the 
first being one of the " Seven Sisters," so-called, three squares 
farther out Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Decatur had always been in easy, almost luxurious circum- 
stances. His father was a rich merchant and distinguished 
naval officer ; his blood and name were good ; he had been a 
child of fortune beyond almost any experience in American his- 
tory, and he was now in the height of that popularity, chival- 
rous spirit and manly beauty, in which no American naval offi- 
cer has supplanted him to this clay. 

With a military cloak around him, he strode out of his door 
and down the short block to the Avenue, passed the White 
House where President Monroe lay asleep, and crossing the 
empty lot where the Treasury has since been established, walked 
directly toward the Capitol, by the Mansion House (on the site 
of Willard's), by the "Indian Queen" (Brown's), and all the 
way the imperfect sidewalks were lined with tall poplar trees, 
the freak of Mr. Jefferson, and through their broken aisle he 
could see the unfinished Capitol, surrounded by scaffolds, dom- 
inating its picturesque hill. Thirty thousand people comprised 
the citizens ; the streets were sparsely lined with houses ; the 
walking on the slopes of Capitol Hill was bad as it possi- 
bly could be ; nobody was alert, and in the freshening silence 
of the morning, Commodore Decatur, forty-one years of age, 
had plenty of stimulation to make a retrospect of his life, and 
to examine his present intentions. 

He was within three hours to meet his ranking officer, Com- 
modore James Barron, in a duel, the twain to stand eight yards 
apart, and fire at each other with pistols. The challenge had 
been accepted, and the arrangements made two weeks before, 
on board the ship-of-the-line Columbus, the ship which Barron 
wished to command, but which Bainbridge, Decatur's second, 
had obtained. As she had lain in deep water of St. Mary's, 
in the Potomac River, getting ready for sea, Captain Elliott 



A DUELING FAMILY. 347 

came aboard, on the anniversary of Decatur's wedding, and 
the time, place, distance, and weapons were solemnly selected. 

Dueling with Stephen Decatur had been partly pastime, in 
part a passion. He had written some sentiments to the con- 
trary, but his life disproved them. We have perhaps never 
had an example in America, certainly never in the North, of a 
family so conspicuous in dueling as Decatur's. His house was 
already the home of the widow and orphans of his brother-in- 
law, James McKnight, shot dead at Leghorn, eighteen years 
before, in a duel with a fellow-officer. Only eighteen months 
prior to the present impending duel, Decatur had been second 
to Oliver Perry, in a duel in New Jersey. In 1803, Decatur 
had compelled a duel at four yards between Midshipman Bain- 
bridge, a relative of his present second, and an English duelist, 
wherein the latter was killed. At school, Decatur was the 
physical champion, and at the age of twenty he fought a duel 
by his father's advice, at Newcastle, Delaware, with a mer- 
chantman's mate, badly wounding the latter in the hip. Two 
years afterward, he made the Spanish naval officers in the har- 
bor of Barcelona feel the presence of his high spirit. In the 
war of 1812, he sent a challenge for a duel between American 
and English frigates. At last he is to enter the lists in a com- 
bat of long and bitter fomentation, and its eventftilness marks 
the complexion of his thoughts. The man whom Decatur was 
to meet had been a disgraced and saddened fellow-officer. 
Nearly thirteen years before, a trusted and accomplished sailor, 
he had set sail in the frigate Chesapeake, from Hampton Roads, 
in the sight of Decatur and a fleet assembled there. I f was in 
the time of peace, five years preceding the war of 1812, and 
Barron's flagship, without a gun ready for service, was suddenly 
boarded on the ocean by a boat from the British ship Leopard, 
whose commander demanded three British sailors to be given 
up. Barron refused to deliver them. The Leopard opened 
fire upon the helpless Chesapeake, and after killing and wound- 
ing many of her men, boarded her and seized the sailors. 

This act set the country afire. The Administration, unwilling 



348 THE DUELING-GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

to go to war, offered up a victim to the people in Commo- 
dore Barron^ but his conduct had been so brave and sailor-like 
that the court martial could only convict him upon his misfor- 
tunes ; and because his ship was not ready for action, he was 
sentenced to be suspended live years without pay. Decatur 
took the leading part in this prosecution of Barron, and in and 
out of court denounced him. It was a time of popular or party 
rage, like our recent impeachment trial, and Barron had few 
defenders so that whoever put himself at the head of the per- 
secution became the idol of the hour, and this man was Deca- 
tur. Supported by the baneful passions of the populace, Deca- 
tur grew very zealous in his opposition to Barron, and no 
doubt, in his fervor, believed that he was right. 

Barron went abroad in the merchant service to earn his 
bread. He had struck the ebb-tide, which never turned till the 
day of his death. Decatur took Barron's ship and hoisted his 
Commodore's pennant.' The war with the British came on 
during Barron's exile, and Decatur, who had struck the flood, 
went buoyantly up from victory to victory, and Barron found 
him, on the latter's return in 1818, a Commissioner of the 
Navy, rich, young, handsome and chivalrous. 

The study of public feeling toward public men is not often so 
painful as wo find it in this case. Every glory achieved by 
Decatur had given him a more gracious and historic bearing. 
Every anguish endured by Barron had made him sad, morose, 
and uncompanionable. The one man, out of his great injustice, 
suspected'' everybody. His themes of talk were his personal 
griefs. He went about asking for sympathy. Decatur carried 
an open countenance and a liberal hand. His chivalrous spirit 
compelled all homage which was not voluntary. And his 
themes of talk were epic and healthy ; so that his company was 
coveted everywhere. 

About a year before the duel, Barron — who was a Virginian 
from Hampton, and, like Decatur, the son of a gallant officer 
— made application for active service, and some newspaper par- 
agraphs guessed that he wanted the fine ship Columbus, and the 
command of the Mediterranean squadron. 



BARRON VS. DECATUR. 349 

All pride of consistency stimulated Decatur to resist Barron's 
request. He was readily joined by Porter and Rodgers, his 
two fellow-Commissioners, and the ship was given to Bain- 
bridge, whom Decatur had rescued from the dangerous Tripoli. 
By this time the unreliable public pulse beat equally with regard 
to Barron, and had the latter not challenged and killed his 
persecutor, it is probable that Decatur's pride of vindictiveness 
would have returned upon himself. 

This is written "after what I think to be thorough and just 
inquiry and research. There is a period which elapses after 
the death of any hero, when he passes out of patriotic into his- 
toric estimate. By the light, and by the right, of Time, there- 
fore, I believe that Decatur's renewed pursuit of Barron, which 
was the cause of this duel, is a shadow upon a life else perfectly 
gallant. He circulated gossip about Barron's position in exile, 
put stigmas upon his courage, and said that " his conduct ought 
to forever bar his readmission to the service." Informers 
going from one to the other, enlarged and envenomed these 
sentences. At last Barron, stung to despair, sent a letter to 
Decatur asking if he said that " you (Decatur) could insult me 
with impunity." 

Then followed a long correspondence^ maintained by Decatur 
with exasperating coolness, and by Barron with irritated en- 
treaty. Barron's object was to have a chance to resume the* 
world anew. So far from imitating the cool malignity of Burr, 
when, resolved upon the death of Hamilton, he wished to avoid 
the duel, and there are indications that Barron was "himself, 
if not under the magnetism of Decatur's brilliant deeds, at 
least aware of the almost entire hopelessness either of escaping 
his bullet, or of standing acquitted in public opinion if Decatur 
should be killed. 

The combat had to come, and Commodore Decatur, walking 
up Pennsylvania Avenue with his will in his pocket, had reason 
to reflect upon the causes and the result of it. Come out as it 
might, had he anything to gain by it, in popularity, in duty, or 
in fortune — he who stood so high already, fighting with poor 



350 THE DUELING-GROUND AT , BLADENSBURG. 

Barron who stood so low ? Barron was older by ten years, an 
invalid, near-sighted, no hand with the pistol ; yet, the distance 
was close ; an officer could scarcely miss ; both might fall. 
But, pshaw ! what right had a professional warrior to consider 
death. Yet, glory — the sole intellectual object of Decatur's 
life, how would his death in a duel affect his fame ? Here we 
may imagine the mind of Decatur going over his correspondence 
with Barron. 

Decatur. " Your motives are a matter of perfect indiffer- 
ence to me ! " 

Barron. "I had concluded that your rancor towards me 
was fully satisfied by the cruel and unmerited sentence of the 
Court of which you were a member. After an exile of seven 
years from my country, family, and friends, I hoped you would 
suffer my lacerated feelings to remain in quiet possession of 
these enjoyments." 

Decatur. " My skill in the use of the pistol exists more in 
your imagination than in the reality." 

Barron. " You have hunted me out, have persecuted me 
with all the power and influence of your office, for what other 
motive than to obtain .my rank, I know not." 

Decatur. " Your offering your life to me would be quite 
affecting and might (as you evidently intend) excite sympathy 
if it were not ridiculous." * 

Barron. " You know not such a feeling as sympathy. I 
cannot be accused of making the attempt to excite it." 

With these and similar of the more vivid and bitter passages 
of their correspondence rising in his mind, Decatur had climbed 
the Capitol Hill and come to the door of Beale's Hotel. Within 
were Commodore Bainbridge and Mr. Samuel Hambleton. 
Breakfast was ready and they sat down together. . Decatur was 
gravely talkative, absent at times, and he spoke of his will, 
unsigned in his pocket, which he said might be signed upon 
the field. He spoke somewhat of Barron. Said he should be 
sorry to kill him, and yet speculated as to where he should hit 
him. By the time breakfast was finished, a carriage, ordered 



DECATUR GOES TO THE EIELD. 3c] 

by Bainbridge, came to the door, and at a quarter past eight 
o'clock, the people meanwhile stirring out of doors, they 
mounted together, with pistol 'leases and flasks of brandy only 
for baggage, and took the dreary way for Bladensburg. 

At that date, in the spring of the year, the Baltimore road 
was a miry wagon track, leading through almost unbroken 
woods of scrub and pine. There were some vestiges of fires 
and burnt timber, where the troops had passed over it in 1814, 
but, except a hut or two in the clearing, and once or twice a 
stage or a peddler's team laboring by, they passed nothing of 
interest. From cheerful inquiry the talk fell to monosyllables, 
and at last to silence, as they approached the appointed place. 
Finally the carriage stopped in a depression of the road, and 
the trio dismounted. They saw, on the rise of ground a little 
way beyond, Captain Elliot standing, cloaked, and he nodded 
his head to Bainbridge's salutation. Decatur descended alone 
by a little worn path, trodden of former duelists into the seclu- 
sion of the place, and there he stood upon the moist grass, 
with the small stream trickling down, completely hidden from 
the passing travel. A little amphitheatre it was, with the 
stream opening an archway in either end through the inter- 
mixed boughs and evergreens, and here had the game of deadly 
chance established its altar, in the infant years of the Federal 
Government. Convenient to a tavern, near the boundary of 
conflicting sovereignties, the ground nearly level, retired, these 
accidents had made this pretty brook drink blood, and this sol- 
itude echo to groans of pain. Directly Bainbridge and Hamble- 
ton returned and they conferred together upon the precise spot 
to be measured, with low voices and with more embarrassed 
countenances every moment. 

The carriage, meantime, had turned into the woods near by. 
When Elliot arrived at Bladensburg, little knots of boys and 
men, knowing or guessing the matter impending, gave him 
interested regard. A group of naval officers, particularly, 
standing at the tavern, walked out across the bridge toward 
the place of meeting, and concealed themselves within hearing 



352 THE DUELING- GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

of pistol shots. Almost every one of them was a friend of 
Decatur, and among, them were Commodores Rodgers and 
Porter, his two colleagues in the Board of Navy Commissioners. 
Barron followed soon afterward, walking between his second, 
Elliot, and his friend, Latimer. His face expressed dignity 
and resolution. He walked firmly, and they three also de- 
scended into the Valley of Chance. 

Decatur and Barron bowed to each other formally. Ham- 
bleton stood by Decatur, Latimer by Barron. Bainbridge and 
Elliot conferred together, and the former, who had behaved 
fairly and equitably throughout, was appointed to measure the 
ground. He marked a line in the sod with his boot, and, plac- 
ing his toe to it, stepped out eight times, a yard to a step, 
marking also the last step as a base. Four times a man's 
length, or across your dining-room, that was the distance. 

Each second now produced the pistols from a pair of cases, 
long-barreled dueling weapons, of fino finish and bright steel, 
silver mounted. They were charged and rammed in the old 
style, and presented to each principal by his second. During 
all this time no word was said except by the seconds. 

In like manner Elliot and Bainbridge tossed for corners. 
Bainbridge won ; it was Decatur's usual good luck. 

" Commodore Decatur," said Bainbridge, " which stand do 
you select ? " 

The axis of the two bases ran nearly north and south, ob- 
liquely from the brook. Decatur walked to the north, nearest 
the water, where he stood a few inches lower than Barron. 
Both threw oif their cloaks and stood confronting each other. 

No man so beautiful as Decatur ever stood in the presence 
of such unmeritorious death. He was little above the medium 
height, but his proportions and carriage gave him the look of 
lofty stature. His waist was slender, and his shoulders broad 
and strong, with sinewy arms dependent therefrom to match 
the round and yet lithe form of his legs and thighs. He stood 
very easily straight, and his head was tall and columnar and 
very erect, covered with black and curling hair, and straight 



THE TWO COMBATANTS. 353 

side-whiskers of the same color. His nose was Grecian — large 
and fitted to fine, spirited nostrils ; his mouth was exquisitely 
curved, and his lips were red. Under his black, arching; eye- 
brows lay those large lustrous eyes which were so fame! for 
their lightnings in excitement, but now were merely grave and 
positive. He was clad in citizen's clothes, cut in close-fitting 
naval fashion, and his attitude and confidence were well calcu- 
lated to disturb his opponents. 

Barron was older, graver, a little gray, and showing less 
chivalrously, a little bent, a trifle weary, no such study for a 
picture as Decatur, and wearing in his resoluten6ss also a re- 
lenting sadness. But he faced the. occasion ; and it was his 
first appearance, it is said, in such inglorious lists.. 

" Gentlemen," said Bainbriclge, raising his voice " I shall 
give the word quickly and as follows ; Present — one — two — 
three. You are neither at your peril to fire before the word 
one, nor after the word three." 

Commodore Barron turned his head,, his pistol hanging at 
his side, and said to Commodore Bainbridge : 

" Have you any objection, sir, to pronouncing the words in 
the manner you intend to give them ? " 

"None," said Bainbridge, and he repeated the formula pre- 
cisely as he afterward gave it. For the first time the antago- 
nists looked into each other's eyes. Sternness and the purpose 
to kill lay in both. 

" 1 hope, sir," said Barron, " that when we meet in another 
world we shall be better friends than we have been in this." 

" I have never been your enemy, sir ! " exclaimed Decatur. 

Here Bainbridge Walked behind Decatur and took place 
twelve or fifteen *feet to his left. Hambleton as far on his right. 
The same positions were reversed by Elliot and Latimer. 

" Gentlemen," said Bainbriclge, " make ready." 

The antagonists swung; round sidewise, and looked at each 
other across their right shoulders. 

" Present—" 
23 



#54 THE DUELING-GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

The two arms went up and each took sight. 

« One— two— " 

One report rang out. The last word was-deafened hy it. On 
the word two, both pistols had been simultaneously discharged. 
There were two puffs of smoke and in an instant Barron was 
down, groaning. 

Decatur straightened up a moment, pinched his lips, dropped 
his pistol, a ; nd the color went out of his 'face. He drew his 
right hand to his side. Then he fell to the ground, speechless. 

The seconds of both were beside them instantly. Decatur 
was raised by his friends and moved to higher ground, near by 
Barron. 

He opened his eyes, directly, and said : 

" I am mortally wounded ; at least I believe so, and I wish 
I had fallen in the service of my country." 

Barron looked up to them all, and said: "Everything has 
been conducted in ifie most honorable manner. I am mortally 
wounded. Commodore Decatur, I forgive you from the bottom 
of my heart." 

Immediately down the pathway to the Valley of Chance 
came many gentlemen, all friends of Decatur — Rodgers, and 
Porter, and Bolton, two doctors, Bailey Washington, and 
Trevitt, General Harper, and others, friends or idlers. 

There were anxious looks, and utterances of " tut ! tut ! " or, 
"dear! dear!" 

The doctors proceeded to loosen the clothes of the sufferers 
and ascertain the nature of their wounds. The little green 
valley at the breakfast hour had become a surgeon's hospital. 
In it were represented nearly all the naval victories of the 
Republic — Tripoli and Algiers, Lake- Erie and both oceans ; 
they held solemn congress in this unholy amphitheatre. 

Barron was struck in the hip and about the groin. Decatur 
had caught the ball on his hip, and it had glanced upward into 
his abdomen, severing the large blood vessels there. The two 
doctors exchanged glances ; there was no hope for Decatur ; 
his pulsation had almost ceased. 



DEATH OF DECATUR. 355 

Now began on the ground, as they lay upon cloaks spread 
for them, that dying interview of mingled tenderness and 
recrimination which Wirt has compared to the last intercourse 
of Hamlet and Laertes. Each striving to clear up his fame, 
and prove that this crime was a mistake or the work of offi- 
cious enemies. Barron, certain that his hours were numbered, 
wished to be at peace with his enemy, that they might enter 
the Court of Judgment friends. Decatur was less relenting, 
but he consented to forgive Barron, though not his advisers. 

It was a sadder scene than Nelson, Decatur's admirer, dying 
in the cockpit during the battle, or Bayard, to whom he had 
been compared, bleeding on the battle-field. 

The carriage came, and they bore Decatur to it, Bainbridge 
kissing his cheek. He had wrested Bainbridge from the dun- 
geons of the Moors. Bainbridge in return had measured the 
ground for him to stain it with his blood. 

Rodgers took Decatur's head upon his shoulders, the doctor, 
Trevitt, seated with them, and the carriage took its painful 
way back to the city. Bainbridge and Hambleton hastened to 
the navy yard, where the tug lay to carry them back to the 
Columbus, that ship of discord. At half-past ten o'clock 
Decatur re-entered his elegant mansion, his wife and household 
disturbed at the breakfast table with the appalling news, and 
they were driven to the upper part of the house. Around the 
city the evil news spread. Friends crowded round the door, 
and into the duelist's dying chamber. He signed his will, 
refused to have the ball extracted from his wound, and spoke 
affectionately of his wife, whom he yet refused to see. Excru- 
ciating pains came to him. After one of the spasms, he said : 

" I did not believe it possible for a person to endure so much 
pain as I feel." 

The town was aroused, and his doorways and pavements 
crowded. They stopped the drawing-room at President Mon- 
roe's. Uncomplaining, in the midst of anguish, to the last, 
the unconquerable soul of the " Bayard of the Seas " yielded 
itself up without a groan at half-past ten o'clock in the night. 



356 THE DUELING-GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

Next day the little old National Intelligencer came out with 
a leaded editoral head, saying that it would be " affectation " 
to be silent upon the fact that the duel had occurred, antl that 
the combatants were mortally wounded. In a " postscript," it 
related that Decatur was dead, and added in the crude apos- 
trophe of that period: "Mourn, Columbia .!. for one of thy 
brightest stars is set ! " Three days afterward the mail was 
robbed, three miles from Baltimore, the driver tied to a tree 
and shot dead, and the mail bags picked over in the bushes 
near by. All this while Decatur's body was going fr.om his 
residence, close by the White House, to " Kalorama," an 
estate on a hill overlooking Georgetown, and while Barron lay 
in the city, writhing in pain, and listening to the funeral 
drums. In Congress, John Randolph offered consolatory 
resolutions, but they were objected to. The tone of the press, 
commenting on the duel, was respectful both to the living and 
the dead antagonist, but as sternly denunciatory of " the code" 
as our newspapers now-a-days could be. I have looked over 
the newspaper files of that time, and find that while the 
" gentlemen " of that day were more cautious than now, the 
rest of society were rude and wild. Runaway negroes and 
fighting cocks were advertised. About the large vital occur- 
rences there was awe-struck mention in the newspapers. The 
mail coach seldom left its tavern or entered the woods or the 
darkness, but all hands were disengaged for expected robbers. 
It was much the same sort of time in America as the ora of 
Jonathan Wild and highwaymen in England. 

Barron suffered dreadfully for many months, but recovered 
at last, and lived down to the year 1851, surviving, I think, 
Decatur's childless widow, who was represented in 1846 to be 
alive in the Georgetown Catholic College, " in ill health and 
poverty, finding in the consolation of religion alone alleviation 
of her sorrows," but hopeful of securing something from 
Congress.* Barron went to sea again, and had charge of 

* Stephen Decatur was an attendant upon the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, although his family predilections were Presbyterian. He left at 



EFFECT ON BARRON. 357 

several vessels, but the shadow of the duel lay across his life. 
People forgot the apology for it in the catastrophe of it. A 
new generation of boys rose up who read of Decatur's valor, 
and learned to regard Barron as his assassin. The poor living 
victim could not explain against a dead man. He asked for a 
court-martial on Decatur's charge against him, and was 
exonerated with niggard compliments. 

Decatur lies buried behind St. Peter's Church, Philadelphia, 
in a venerable and spacious graveyard, under an eagle-capped 
monument. His portrait is in Georgetown College. His name 
is conferred on many towns and counties of this country. 
What he lived for he has obtained — glory in the eyes of his 
countrymen. Barron obtained " satisfaction " — little more. 
Yet, I think that the latter was throughout the aggrieved 
spirit, and that Decatur never fought nor assisted at a duel 
where the provocation was so ungenerous as that which he 
gave Barron. Decatur was gallant and popular ; Barron was 
sick and disgraced. Decatur had the heart of the nation, 

his death what was presumed to be a fair estate for his widow, considering 
that he had no children. In the settlement and sale of this estate Mrs. 
Decatur was reduced to an annuity of about $600 a year. About 1828 she 
became a convert to the Catholic Church, and maintained until her death 
an intimate association with the Jesuit clergy at Georgetown. Her close 
acquaintance with the Carroll family is thought to have brought about this 
accomplishment. For several years she rented a frame house on the brow 
of a hill 50 or 100 yards from the Georgetown College, the house being the 
property of Miss Hobbs. In this house she died, about 1860, and is buried 
within pistol shot of its roof. A small marble cross above the grave says : 

" Sacred to the memory of Susan Decatur, wife of the late Commodore 
Stephen Decatur, U. S. N., who departed this life June 21, 1860." 

A light iron railing surrounds the lot. Father Corley, of the Jesuit 
brotherhood, who came to Georgetown in 1826, told me he had often walked 
and talked with Mrs. Decatur, and that she imputed the duel in which her 
husband engaged to Commodore Bainbridge. Decatur, she said, had no 
desire to fight Barron, but Bainbridge was resolved to have the encounter. 
Amongst the souvenirs of Georgetown College is the portrait of Decatur by 
Gilbert Stuart, his ivory chess-board and chess men, and his jeweled tooth- 
pick box. 



358 THE DUELING-GROUND AT BLADENSBURG. 

a lovely wife, a happy home ashore, and any ship he wanted at 
sea. All that Barron had which Decatur had not was a higher 
peg in rank. Barron had nothing but this poor empty peg, 
and the suspicious reader cannot be able to evade the belief 
that Decatur wanted it. The correspondence between them 
embraces about a dozen letters, and was begun and finished by 
Barron. Decatur's letters are taunting ; Barron's are pleading. 
The moral onus of the duel is on Decatur ; for, although he 
was the challenged party, he tempted the challenge. Barron 
had not been distinguished in dueling, like Decatur. He„ was 
near-sighted. He had people to bewail his loss, and Decatur 
was childless. Yet Decatur, the better shot, choosing his own 
place, distance, and position, died by the " code " he had 
accepted, and on " the field " he had so frequently tempted. 
Barron has little posthumous mention made of him in any 
book of biography or passing paper. Persecuted by his wound 
to the end of his life, the victim of misfortune, and the victor 
in a lottery of murder, he demonstrates how hard it is to be «a 
duelist and live, and Decatur how hard it is to be a duelist 
and die. 



CHAPTER XXY. 



SOME OF THE ABLEST MEN OP AFFAIES OF THE PERIOD. 

" Who are really great men in our government ? " 

I shall answer this question by setting in a row, without 
much regard to association, some of the striking people I have 
sketched in the past five years at Washington. 

And first, that great protector of the civil government and 
maker of war, Stanton, whose funeral I attended at Oak Hill 
Cemetery. 

He had no political purposes to follow the war, no party to 
organize, nothing to consider but the gigantic fact that he was 
the responsible agent of half a million of men bearing up in 
the bloody field the fortunes of forty millions, and the cause of 
mankind. He was ridden down not only by multitudes of 
thieves, but by loitering officers, politicians seeking prefer- 
ments and commissions for their constituents, by tens of thou- 
sands of men and women wishing to go through the lines to 
visit their sons and brothers, and many of them, in the little- 
ness of their responsibility and the greatness of , their private 
sacrifices, were in that frame of mind to be quickly wounded 
at a refusal. It was in that period that the State possessed a 
man who above all others had the power to refuse, and the 
energy to say " No." , 

I was once in his office when it was crowded with people of 
all sorts, all seeking something, or listening for some fancied 
purpose or piece of information, and this was his way of dis- 
posing of them : 

(359) 



360 GREAT STATESMEN. 

"What do you want? " to a woman. 

" I want a pass to see me husband in Camp Stanton.' , 

" You can't go. Next ! " 

" I want permission to copy the papers in the Smith court- 
martial ? " 

"What for?" 

" To make an appeal." 

" Come again to-morrow. I'll think about it ! " 

"But—" 

" Come to-morrow. (In a high key), Pass on! Next!" 

"I want a pass to City Point, to find the body of my son." 

" Let me see. your letter of recommendation ! 

" Yes ! You will have it. Stand aside there ! What are 
you doing here ?" (To an officer with a star on his shoulder 
— a General). 

" Why, Mr. Secretary, I thought I'd look in—" 

" Go to your brigade ! If I find you in this District within 
six hours I'll put you in the Carroll Prison amongst the 
common deserters. Go! Next man." 

The next man puts up a paper, and says, sententiously. 

" I want that ! " 

" That you shall have. Orderly, take him to General Town- 
send. Next!" 

And so the endless levee went on, aggregated by all manner 
of episodes; and in the whole terrific revolution, in the agita- 
tated and tottering republic, there seemed to be but one man 
aware that there was war in the land, earnest and bloody war, 
to be grappled with, driven back, and brought to an end. The 
President jested, the Secretary of State gave dinners, the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury had ambition, the Secretary of the In- 
terior was for himself. Stanton was the one man forever alive 
to the fact' that bloody rebellion was to be gashed, stabbed, 
fought, humiliated, and, if need be, made a dreadful spectacle 
of retribution. 

One day in the rain and mud, without music, with grave 
silence, with what of the Government remained to follow, the 



EDWIN M. STANTON. 861 

last mould which encased the terrible patriot was carried 
from his habitation in life to his grave, on the acclivities of 
Georgetown. There is nothing beautiful in funerals, but the. 
grief of the bereaved, and yet here is all that is decorous to 
death, — flowers, tears, soldiers, Senators, Generals, the Pres- 
ident. The face of the dead was closed to mere inquisitive- 
ness, and the real friends looked the last in an upper cham- 
ber. The procession included the Judges, amongst whom he 
could have been seated. It would have been a beautiful 
thing, perhaps, to have seen this broken Jove mellow into a 
f hoary Justice ; but nature was wiser, and as he stood at the 
'' footstool of the Bench, ready to go up and be at rest, she slew 
f him in the vestibule, like a soldier, and piled his mighty record 
• upon him for a monument. ^ 

Next let us take a look at Thaddeus Stevens whose funeral 
I attended also at Lancaster city. Of him the Hon. John D. 
Baldwin said to me one day: 

" Gath, I am one of those rare men who cannot make Stevens 
a great man. What is the matter with me ? " 

" You don't go to the theatre enough, Mr. Baldwin. A good 
theatrical education is necessary to appreciate the dramatic 
situations of Mr. Stevens." 

"That must be it," he said. "I always supposed that a 
statesman had vivid views of policy, and succeeded in impress- 
ing them upon legislation. Mr. Stevens was never able, with 
his exalted position, to reconcile the House to his Reconstruc- 
tion plan. Time and again he brought it up, and it grew fee- 
bler every day. That was worse than any statesman's failure ! 
His financial views were so far away that no eulogist has been 
bold enough to refer to them. His inattention to business was 
one of the worst examples set by our public men. Stevens, it 
seems to me, had genius, but he was adapted entirely for oppo- 
sition — not to take occasion by the hand and establish, with a 
victorious party at his back, principles and views which. should 
succeed an era of revolution, with an era of statesmanship." 

" Time will measure him up cubically right." 



362 great' statesmen. 

" Certainly it will ! After this party and the next one goes 
down, Stevens will take his permanent rank for what he was 
alone." 

" Mr. Baldwin," said I, further, " you have referred to Mr. 
Stevens' inattention. ' Is not that the gate through which 
swindlers come into Congress ? " 

" Yes, sir ! Few members at that time have ever fallen 
under suspicion of dishonesty ; but the loose way of doing bus- 
iness characteristic of the majority of Committees grows with 
the extent of the business ; at last some clerk becomes advised 
and influential, and to him the detail work is left ; then the 
enemy gets the password, and in the end it is impossible for a 
member to catch up with all that he has neglected. My im- 
pression is that if the work of Congress were well done by 
Congressmen these shames would cease. Easy good nature is 
also the enemy of pure legislation. Saying ' yes,' frequently, 
the member is at last the daily prey of the lobbyist." 

Some time in 1869, 1 visited Providence Hospital in Wash- 
ington : one of several institutions which receives a subsidy 
from Congress, and which is a more worthily sustained and 
well managed concern than the Government Insane Asylum, 
and entering the parlor I saw among some prints of saints 
and the Virgin, a fine steel portrait of Thaddeus Stevens. 

" How came you to place this face here ? " I said to the sis- 
ter ; " are you not a heretic, to your politics at least ? " 

" Why ! he was our greatest friend ; he got our appropriation 
v for us. We think very dear of his memory." 

There was something of the Church Gallican or the Church 
Universal in this. These quiet and dutiful Sceurs hold the 
Pope also to be a good old man, cheated and abused, but they 
had neither knowledge of the political questions involved in the 
big and useless council held at the time, nor sympathy with the 
prelates who will go there to support them. This Providence 
Hospital is managed with much economy. Some time ago the 
one cow which gives milk to all the patients broke through the 
covering of an old well, and was not found for a whole day. 
Suddenly Sister Catharine ran in, much excited, and cried : 



CARL SCHURZ. 363 

" Pray, Sisters, pray for the cow down the well, while I run 
for help." 

They all fell to praying in the hardest way, while the little 
woman brought some workmen, who rigged a derrick and 
wound up the maternal font of the hospital. If a politician 
had had charge of that hospital, he would have dug a new well 
and charged a new cow to Congress. 

From Stevens let us turn to a brilliant debater, — Carl Schurz : 

Schurz resided in 1871 in a pleasant .dwelling on F street, 
between the War Department and the Potomac, in a roomy and 
semi-secluded house. His children were at school in Europe. 

His library is his favorite place of sojourn, and when he can 
' be induced, which is seldom, to speak of his German adven- 
tures, his tall, strong, robust figure, and half-Mephistophilian 
face, take all the interest of romance. When he came to 
America, in 1852, he could scarcely speak a sentence of English ; 
now he is an orator in the same language. He was a student 
at Bonn when the revolution of '48 broke out, and then he be- 
came a Lieutenant in the patriot army, and served till the cap- 
ture of Rastadt, when he retired to France. His old bosom 
friend and Professor having been captured and put in a dun- 
geon near Berlin, Schurz disguised himself and rescued him, 
and the two set sail in a boat of twenty tons burden from Ros- 
tock, on the Baltic, to Edinburgh, Scotland. After a stormy 
passage they arrived at Leith, the port of Edinburgh, on Sun- 
day, and dressed in their strange German costume, and unable 
to say any English words but lifstech and sherry, they wan- 
dered about, pursued by crowds of little boys. Toward night, 
worn out, with a Calvinistic Sunday, they went into a hotel, 
and were obliged to poke their forefingers in their mouths to 
indicate hunger. The waiter, after a long while, appeared 
with a huge bowl, and poking his forefinger into it, said, with 
great energy, "Ox-tail-soup ! " Schurz stayed a week in London, 
then resided two years in Paris, and finally sailed for New 
York, a married man. 

Schurz is the ablest running debater in Congress, and he 



364 GREAT STATESMEN. 

possesses the conscientiousness and dignity which we miss so 
generally in public life. His domestic life is sweet and affec- 
tionate, and he possesses traits too gentle and honorable always 
to give him the advantage in the unscrupulous encounters of 
American legislation. 

Walking up the Avenue with Carl Schurz in the spring of 
1873, 1 asked him if we might riot take some comfort in Amer- 
ica from the official corruptions of other countries. 

He said that in Prussia, there was a good deal of fraud com- 
mitted under the. cover of joint stock companies, but that the 
government service was honest. In France, there had been 
corruptions in the army, particularly in the conscription ac- 
count, under the empire. He did not think, however, that cor- 
ruption in any degree comparative to the extent in which we 
had it in America was to be found anywhere in Europe, unless 
in Russia. s 

Some days after this, I met an American Inspector of our 
Consulates in foreign lands, who had but recently returned to 
Washington. He said that everywhere in Western Europe, 
amongst social acquaintances, he was the subject of inquiry 
and talk on the matter of corruption in the American official 
service ; that he steadily debated the imputation, although 
knowing that much of it was unanswerable ; but that, since he 
has returned home, he is satisfied that we have the most corrupt 
class of legislators and executive officers in the world, not 
excepting Russia, where, despite the increasing evils of gener- 
ations of despotism, there is still enough force at the head of 
affairs to make terrible examples at certain times of peculators, 
and, between this fear and the growing civilization of the 
country, the Russian officials bid fair to be reformed sooner 
than our own. 

From Schurz let us turn to his great predecessor from Mis- 
souri. 

Colonel Thomas H. Benton, the principal projector of the 
Pacific Railway, whose statue stands in St. Louis to-day, look- 
ing westward along the line, aquiline and grim as in life, with 



THOMAS H. BENTON. 365 

his cloak folded around him. I have obtained some personal 
reminiscences of him, one or two of which may be pertinent to 
the theme of this chapter. 

Shillington is an Irish-bookseller here, of credit and renown 
at Washington., Benton was a neighbor and friend of his, and 
made Shillington cut out of books and newspapers every con- 
ceivable article upon the Pacific Railway and bring it to him. 
He also employed Shillington to select from the Congressional 
Globes, which were brought to his house in C street by the 
cart-load, the matter that he wished in publishing his Abridge- 
ment of the Debates of Congress. 

" It was a strange and remarkable study," said Shillington, 
" to see that old man lying there flat on his back, unable to 
rise, his spectacles poised on the tip of his nose, looking 
through the long debates, whose huge folios he held on his 
breast. He knew that he had but a week or two to live, and 
he was running a race with death to get the book finished ; for 
he believed that it was the vital thing to keep the country to- 
gether. He used to send me word four or five times a day to 
come up there, and' the people said that I was his servant. If 
I did not come promptly on time, the old gentleman seemed to 
feel that I was in some way derelict in my duty to the country. 

One day, when the shop was full of people, word came down, 
' Mr. Benton wants you to come up at 2 o'clock, to help him 
on an important matter.' As soon as I could possibly leave I 
went around to his dwelling, and found him asleep, breathing 
very hard, with a large volume of the Globe on his breast. I 
lifted the book off, and set it on a table a little out of reach. 
Then, seeing that he did not yet awaken, I hastened back to 
my work. In about two hours I returned, and the old man 
looked very severely at me. 

" ' I sent lor you, sir, two hours ago. I have but a month, 
at most, to live, sir, and it is important for the country that 
this book shall be finished before I die. You did not come, 
sir.' 

" Yes ! Mr. Benton, I did, and I found you asleep.' 



366 GREAT ' STATESMEN. 

" ' I have not slept fetf fifty hours, sir ! It was impossible 
that I could sleep, sir, with so much on my mind !' 

" Benton never trusted a man that told him a lie, so I found 
it necessary to clear myself. 

" ' Mr. Benton,' said I, ' you were asleep, with a volume of 
the Globe on your breast, when I entered the room, and I 
found you breathing hard, so I put the book on the table 
yonder. ' 

" The old man's eyes lighted up. 

" ' Well now, sir, he said, ' I knew I had that book on my 
breast, or on the bed somewhere, and I wondered how it got 
off there so. far. Perhaps I did doze a little unconsciously. 
But come, sir, we must get to work, I have but a little time to 
do a great deal of work in.' 

" When Benton was about to die, so vital did he think his 
advice was to the country, he sent for Buchanan, had the door 
closed, and solemnly devoted his last hours to impressing upon 
the President his opinion of the mode in which the country 
should be administered. If ever there was a man," concluded 
Shillington, " who thought that in his mind and reason lay the 
true destiny of the Union, it was Tom Benton. His family, 
his fame, his future were all subordinate to the love of 
country." 

A brilliant man, of evil habits, in his day, was James A. 
McDougall, of California, who died in 1867. He has left 
many anecdotes of himself at Washington, where he is regarded 
as the fallen angel, the superb ruin, a sweetly melancholy por- 
trait out of Decadence, like those carousing Romans painted by 
Couture. His , desultory learning was remarkable ; so was the 
tenacity of his memory, the stronger when his brain was most 
aflame, and he used to quote from the Greek and Latin poets 
by the page, steadying himself, meantime, a poor old sot in 
body, while his luminous intellect kept the bar-rooms in a 
thrill. 

There is a restaurant near the Capitol where they still show 
McDougall's dog, a milk-white mongrel, with the fawning 



SENATOR MCDOUGALL. 367 

habits left in which it was humored by its master. Like his 
memory, it is most vivid and familiar with bar-keepers and 
tavern loiterers, and they say with some vanity : 

" Knows tha' dorg ?" 

" No !" 

" That's Senator McDougall's favo-rite purp !" 

McDougall used to feign great knowledge of the small 
sword, and an Irishman or Scotchman was in Washington 
during the war, giving officers fencing lessons. One day 
McDougall dared him to a combat with canes. They crossed a 
while, and Mc, half drunk, gave the master a violent " dab " 
on the side of the ear that nearly knocked him down. 

The swordsman said to McDougall : 
," That was foul. Now I'm going to clean you out." 

"Don't you touch that man," cried a vagrant Irishman, 
loitering near, who had heard, perhaps, through the tavern 
windows some of the drunken Senator's didactics : '" that 
man's a good Dimmicratic Senator, and a great gaynius. If 
you hit him I'll mash your nose." 

So the wayward steps of the poor lost old man were upheld 
by invisible attendants, extorted to his service by the charm 
and command of his talents ; for when drunkest he was most 
arrogantly oracular, and did all the talking himself. 

They recall, who have ever heard them, Saulsbury and 
McDougall together, the latter defining in a wild, illustrated, 
poetic way, the word government, law, or sovereign, pouring 
upon it the wealth of his vagrant readings, making a mere 
definition gorgeous by his endowments of color, light, and 
sentiment. Then Saulsbury, shutting one eye to see him 
fairly, would say with ludicrous pity : 

" McDougall, you're the brightest intellect in the American 
Senate ! " 

Clutching Saulsbury with the grasp of a vise, and speaking 
to him in a tone of solemn warning, McDougall would retort : 

" You, sir, would be the brightest intellect if you would 
study ! " 



368 GREAT' STATESMEN. 

At this Saulsbury, in a maudlin way, falls to weeping, and 
McDougall, imagining himself called upon in this case to utter 
a mild reproach, would construct a garment of sanctity for 
himself : 

" I burn the lamp early and late," said McDougall. " The 
rising sun sees me, up already laboring with the muse of 
Homer. [Sob from Saulsbury.] I reach down the Koran at 
sunrise, and read myself a sublime lesson, pilfered, it is true, 
from the benignant Brahma, but little altered except in the 
vernacular. ■ At eight o'clock, like Socrates, I breakfast upon 
a fig and a cake of oatmeal. Wine never crosses these lips. 
"Till ten o'clock I roam in my gardens, communing with the 
mighty master of the Saducees." [Sob from Saulsbury.] 

Enter the bar-keepers with the drinks, and the airy castle 
dissolves. 

The wild things done by McDougall would make a comedy 
fit for Farquhar. His entire mileage anu pay he spent — taking 
little note of his family — making altogether about twelve 
thousand dollars a year. He died in Albany, near his birth- 
place, a victim to his temperament ; for he had no grain of 
practical executive tact, and his poetic nature made him both 
the stature and the wreck he was. The fire that made him 
brilliant, made him also ashes. 

No sketch of men of mark at Washington would be complete 
without Charles Sumner. He has resided for several years in 
a pleasant new residence at the corner of IT street and Ver- 
mont -Avenue. His dwelling below stairs is a pair of salons 
tastefully and copiously filled with busts, engravings, books, 
and articles of virtuoso. 

Thus far many visitors have penetrated into this senatorial 
labyrinth, but fewer have had opportunities to estimate the 
pleasantness of his dinners, enlivened and made cheerful by a 
host who long ago accepted the English mode of living — to 
save the day for stint and work, and to resign the evening to 
good cheer. 

On the second floor, in one very large and nearly square 



CHAELES SUMNEE. 369 

apartment, lighted by windows on two sides, Mr. Sumner has 
his work table, and here again methodized, yet with such 
infinite multiplication, that the eye at first sees only confusion, 
are the implements of his unfinished tasks in manuscript, note- 
books, and all the paraphernalia of intellectual productiveness. 

Mr. Sumner sits at a large table, a drop-light bringing into 
clear, yet soft relief, his large, imposing stature, strong face, 
great wave of hair, a little grizzled, and encased in his dress- 
ing-gown and slippers he looks like Forrest's delineation of 
Richelieu sitting in his library between the hours of state, 
recreating at play-writing. 

Our estimate of public men is too often narrow, harsh, and 
based upon little angularities which scandal-talking people 
take up and magnify, until at last they seem -to comprehend 
the whole character of the man. In this way our conceptions 
of the leaders of opinion have come to be destroyed, and we 
acquire the habit of resolving our hero into his manner, or we 
gauge his life by some current anecdote. 

It has been said of Mr. Sumner that he has not a patient 
temper, that he is uncompromising, and that he is impracti- 
cable. The second of these distinctions does him honor, for 
although an uncompromising man, he is never disturbed except 
upon leading questions, and after twenty years in the Senate 
he is still heard to debate at rare times, and is always heard 
with the keenest interest by all. 

Not a particle of his life has been wasted ; he is uncompro- 
mising in the breach when the main assault is to be made, but 
in the camp he is modest and agreeable as a priest. As to his 
want of practicability, the progress of the nation of which he 
has been the ideal leader in its better elements for twenty 
years, disproves the shallow assumption. His life has been* 
without a great mistake, but his successes have all been large, 
real, and abiding. Since he left Harvard College in 1830, he 
has passed the gamut of all the practical workshops through 
which a Senator should go to his accomplishments ; at the age 
of twenty-two he took charge of the " American Jurist," and. 
24 



370 GREAT STATESMEN. 

edited it with the keen eye of a natural lawyer. While pursu- 
ing successfully his legal practice in Boston, between the ages 
of twenty-three and twenty-six, he was the reporter of the 
United States Circuit Court, and teacher at the Cambridge 
Law School, and the editor of several books on admiralty and 
practice. He became a marked man in that discriminating, 
educated community, as one of the future ornaments of the 
Commonwealth, and in 1837 he went abroad, and enjoyed the 
confidence of the best and most experienced in public life. 
Keturning in 1840, he edited "Vesey's Eeports," in twenty 
volumes, and thenceforward for eleven years, until his election, 
at one bound, from private life to the United States Senate, 
Mr. Sumner was the beau ideal of the State as an orator and 
young leader of the civilization around him. His life has not', 
therefore, been cramped and corrupted in the purlieus of State 
legislatures, nor manipulated by the small proprietors Of 
caucuses, nor did he come to the Senate hemmed around with 
promises to a host of lackeys and parasites ; he rose direct 
from a private citizen of Massachussets to be her Senator in 
place of Webster, and at the age of forty. 

The people of Washington have known more or less of Mr. 
Sumner for twenty-one years. In that time our municipal life 
has experienced many shocks, and the ground appears to have 
given way under our feet ; but on the whole there is probably 
no one conviction clearer than this: that Mr. Sumner has 
steadily risen through the bitter repugnance, and the social 
obtuseness of old Washington sentiment, until we ourselves 
acquit him to-day as probably the greatest character we have 
yet seen from the North. The terrible enemy of what has 
passed away, but always the earnest friend of the Capital city, ; 
its edifices, its adornments, — never factious, never in any sense 
a demagogue, never suspected even by the most scandalous of ; 
being other than a pure man in all his relations to his country 
— what he is to us he appears in tenfold stronger light to i 
the people of his native section, who also know him from boy- 1 
hood up. 



BENJAMIN F. BUTLER. 371 

Few men in Washington by hook or crook have kept such a 
general run of notoriety and influence as General Butler of 
Massachusetts. This man who seized the Relay House, crept 
like a panther and at a spring into Baltimore, sent a rebel 
woman to a torrid island, held the trenches before Richmond, 
flung a couple of iison mines into Fort Fisher, made New York 
shudder, and himself one of the most debateable names in our 
military history, I saw stand one Monday, without uniform, 
before the Court of Impeachment, to open the case of the 
People against President Johnson." 

A singular presence was his, — short, broad-shouldered, short- 
legged, fat, without much neck, but with a good many flaps 
around the throat, standing as if a trifle bow-legged, and with 
no suggestion of a military habit and life, rather of sedentary 
occupations which had encouraged the sagacities and resent- 
ments — say, indeed, a politician ! A curious natural crescent 
of a forehead, sweeping round from ear to ear, was developed 
by baldness into a great cranium of a shining pink color, in 
which the folds of the brain revealed themselves with a naked, 
muscular appearance. Too naked, indeed, was the man's head, 
to give the lookers-on in the galleries a comfortable feeling. 
But for the red tint of his baldness he looked cold. • 

Now, this man's face, instead of looking straight forward, 
was compelled to point its chin upwards when it wanted to see 
anything ahead, because one of its eyelids was in a condition 
of permanent suspension. He peeped under it as, under a 
green shade, you often see some acquaintance of yours level 
his eye along the surface of his cheek. By sympathy with this 
eye, the other eye also hung fire a little, and it is needless to 
say that persons of this sort are very seldom handsome. Never 
forgetting this half-closed eyelid, therefore, you must further 
imagine the rest of the face to be of an audacious, not to say 
pugnacious, cast and expression. The ears, the eyebrows, the 
broad cheek bones, the contour of the chin are without delica- 
cy, salient, but not massive. He seems forever thinking up 
some keen, scathing utterance. The sides of the bald head 



372 GREAT STATESMEN. 

have some thick wings of dark hair hanging to them like the 
feathered wings of a fowl, else plucked. This man wears a 
good, new coat of black cloth, to match the rest of his dress. 
Your first feeling as you see him is, that if he were a school- 
master you would mind your lesson ; if he were a bank pres- 
ident you would hate to ask him for' a discount. Because he 
looks as if he would just as lief refuse as consent, and would 
probably refuse in terms calculated to make a man feel very 
uncomfortable. In short, Mr. Butler is a man that you per- 
haps wish to have nothing of business to do with at all. He 
would bully you ; he would also conquer you. He would rath- 
er impress you with a sense of his power, than his magnan- 
imity. 

As to his talents, he need be at no pains to impress you with 
it ; for you admit the same without challenge. A good, strong, 
suspicious, measuring, worldly look is all over his face. Over 
the eyebrows the forehead is raised into bumps, as you always 
see it in men quick at words. Little inertia has he, seeming 
always poised for a leap. A reflection is always folded under 
that large, flat, eyelid. Masses of men, whether audiences, 
mobs, supplicants, legislatures, or juries, affright him never, 
having always perfect confidence in himself and never-daunted 
courage. ' Waiting to address this court and the great and 
brilliant historic audience, you see him sit at his counsellor's 
table with the roll of his speech, without a contraction of the 
throat, a cough, a look of modesty, an attempt at composure — 
without anything but a set audacity of self-reliance, a wish to 
get up and go on, a contemptuous impatience for the fight. 

This is the remarkable man — remarkable always, whether 
with the majority or minority — who, without much appeal to 
original principles, or any considerable sacrifice to great motives, 
has carved for his own person a stature, of the first prominence 
in the history of these eight years of violence. His life has 
been already written by the most fascinating of our biographers, 
and the influence of his will upon the country and its enemies, 
has been impressive and decided. * • 



BENJAMIN F. BUTLER. 373 

General Butler is one of those men who, reared, so to spe^k, 
at the criminal bar, have never had any material reverence for 
the law, more than a sharp-shooter for his rifle. The law has 
been to him a weapon, not a master. His appeals have never 
been addressed to the old Doctors of the Law, seeking their 
reason rather than their weakness. The world in which he has 
striven for fame has been a miscellaneous jury. He has inj 
formed himself upon the motives and credences of human na- 
ture, and made the object of all his endeavors, not to convince 
but to win. In military affairs, as in legal, he has paid little 
attention to the comity of nations, the laws of war, or military 
precedents. To astonish, to awe, to conquer, have been his 
aspirations. And probably no man in this country e^er ap- 
pealed so successfully to the personal fears of men. Baltimore, 
New Orleans, and New York, alike felt the terror oft his pres- 
ence. He made himself as awful to the gold gamblers of Wall 
Street and the secession girls and wives of Nev Orleans, as to 
armed rioters and disaffected and treacherous cities. Discard- 
ing all the magnanimities, he was as keen te detect as to puia- 
ish the minutest infractions of loyalty, even when expressed by 
looks, by absence, or by silence. In like manner he was always 
alert for short cuts to great military ends, as in the canals of 
the James and Mississippi, and the powder ship of Fort Fisher. 
He has never had his eye off General Grant, since the latter 
ridiculed him in his report, and he did not scruple to charge 
Mr. Bingham with having murdered Mrs. Surratt upon muti- 
lated evidence, who would, probably, himself, have hanged her 
without any trial at all. 

While Mr. Butler has thus been always in the advance where 
resolute acts of intimid action were required, he has seldom 
succeeded in the direct face of an equal enemy, after his in- 
genious expedients and " short-cut " surprises had failed. He 
was the first either to apprehend or to imitate the spirit of 
slavery, which is about the same thing in its consequence, and 
the terror of his name paralyzed the arms of assassins who had 
sworn to have his life. He went back to Massachusetts after 



374 GREAT STATESMEN. 

tie war, and with the same determination to win, invaded a 
neighboring Congressional District, pitched his tent upon a 
common until he had obtained citizenship, and then swept 
away all competition by the audacity of his canvass, fairly driv- 
ing the baser lot of politicians to support him by the supposed 
terror of his influence. 

Here in Washington he is surrounded with almost a full 
company of adherents. They bring him news, search out rec- 
ords and authorities for him, do copying and errand-running, 
carry threats and inducements, and in short, increase his power, 
by virtue of that law which Ben Wade quoted the other day : 
" Th3 more you kick a breed of hounds, the more they cling to 
you !'* 

Never in a Republic, has one man succeeded in making him- 
self so terrible. Appealing always to the instinct of fear, lie 
has thus far succeeded beyond the power of talents, of social 
influence, of wealth, or of popularity, in putting himself at the 
head of every assault. His talent lies in his perception, his 
language, and his audacity. Few men have like fluency and 
conciseness of expression. Take some examples ; What is 
stronger than his denomination of an insolent woman : " She 
shall be treated as a common woman of the town, plying her 
vocation !" 

Of Johnson : " He was thrown to the surface by the whirl- 
pool of civil war !" 

Of the Dred Scott decision : "Time has not yet laid its soft- 
ening and correcting hand long enough upon this decision to 
allow me further to comment upon it in this presence." 

His method is as wonderful. He has more Congressional 
business brought to him from outside parties and from all parts 
of the country, than any other five men in Congress. All this 
is carefully classified and recorded, to be referred to at a mo- 
ment's notice, and some of his speeches are the work, in 
detail, of probably twenty or thirty men, each carting up some 
fact or inference, while he, like a confident architect, puts it 
together and hews it into shape. 





THE MEN WE NEED. 375 

The terrible shaking up we have had with great men by the 
war, by the cheap printing, the public schools, the mass meet- 
ings, the quick travel, and the growth of public business, has 
set us to thinking that perhaps we shall never have any more 
indisputably great men. If we can get as good stewards and 
magistrates as the better average of society, we shall almost be 
satisfied to let Washington and the heroes lie back unquestioned 
in their mythologic halo. The cry is no more for a miracle, a 
Shiloh, a past God, or a coming man ; it is for a neighbor, a 
Christian, a magnanimous and worthy gentleman, an honest 
man in high places. If our public men will be no worse than 
the responsible men of our private communities we shall have 
approved our democracy a success, because in the logical order 
of development here, the people should not be the disciples of 
the statesmen, but the statesmen should be the servants and 
exponents of the people. 



CHAPTEE XXYL 



CUEIOSITIES OP THE GREAT BUREAUX OF THE GOVERNMENT. 

Few readers have ever pushed into the queer nooks and 
queerer documents around the Capitol which exhibit the multi- 
fold operations of a modern government. 

Let us run over some items of what is called the Legislative, 
Executive, and Judicial Appropriation Bill, selecting the Bill 
of 1871 which was passed by a relatively honest Congress. 

CONGRESS. 

Do you know what it costs to pay the Senators' salaries and 

mileage per annum ? Four hundred thousand dollars ! Cheap 

at half the money ! Do you know what it costs the House for 

the same? One' million ! But halt! The officers, clerks, and 

messengers of the Senate get, besides, $130,000 ; and the same 

officers of the House get about $200,000. The police, who 

patrol the Capitol, and sit around the little parks enclosing it, 

cost $43,000. The stationery and newspapers of the Senate 

cost about $14,000, and for the House $37,000. The little 

pages, who run around the floor, cost in the House $7,600, and 

in the Senate $'8,000. What does the Senate want with so 

' ny pages, when the more numerous body requires so few ? 

^sts the Senate $46,000 for packing-boxes, folding docu- 

Mture, fuel, gas, and furniture-wagons. It costs the 

~^»s and cartage, $16,000. The Committee 

$33,000, and of the Senate $25,000. 

(376) 



SALARIES OP OFFICIALS. 377 

The Secretary of the Senate and Clerk of the House get $4,320 
each, and the Librarian of Congress gets $4,000. All the 
clerks of the Library of Congress, taken together, require $26,- 
000 a year ; and the library is allowed only $12,500 per annum 
to buy books, purchase files of periodicals and newspapers, and 
exchange public documents with foreign Governments. 

Public printing costs an enormous sum, and the appropria- 
tions almost always fall short. Still, it is questionable whether, 
on the whole, we do not dignify ourselves, and confer benefit 
on the country by maintaining, as we undoubtedly do, the most 
perfect printing establishment in the world, not excepting Na- 
poleon's printing house in Paris as it used to be maintained. 
For the present year, there will be appropriated for the public 
printing, $655,000 for composition and press work ; $709,000 
for paper to print upon ; $552,000 for binding books, and $75,- 
000 for engraving and map-printing. 

Coming to Executive appropriations, we find that two police- 
men, two night-watchmen, a door-keeper,, and an assistant 
door-keeper, at the White House cost unitedly $8,000. The 
President's Private Secretary gets $3,500 ; his assistant $2,500 ; 
two of the President's clerks $2,300 each ; the White House 
steward, who buys the grub and gets up the dinners, $2,000 ; 
and the messenger $1,200. 

At the State Department, it costs $12,000' to publish the laws 
in pamphlet forms ; and for proof-reading, packing the laws 
and documents off to our Consuls, and such, we spend $47,000 
annually. The eternal Mexican Commission costs us $28,700 
a year, and our Commissioner gets $4,700, and the umpire, 
who lives out of town and is seldom called cm, $3,000. The 
Spanish Commission costs us $15,000. The High Joint busi- 
ness at Geneva was provided for by a special appropriation of 
$250,000. They drink over there nothing less than chambertin. 

At the Treasury Department are required for the Secretary, 
his assistants and immediate clerks, $384,000. What is a 
char-woman ? There are here provided for, ninety char-women, 
at $180 a year each. These are, indeed, scrub wages. The 



378 CURIOSITIES OF THE BUREAUX. 

Architect's office, presided over by the great Inigo Jones Mullett, 
costs about $27,000. This bill provides that, from the contin- 
gent expense appropriation of $100,000, no part shall be ex- 
pended for clerical hire. The Comptrollers of the Treasury 
cost, unitedly, $11,500. The office of the Commissioner of 
Customs at Washington costs $37,000. The Auditors' offices 
cost as follows : First Auditor, $58,000 ; Second, $384,000 ; 
Third, $289,000 ; Fourth, $83,000 ; Fifth, $60,000 ; and the 
Special Auditor of the Treasury for the Post-Office Department 
requires $267,000. Uncle Spinner, the Treasurer, demands 
for his office $189,000. The office of the Register of the 
Treasury requires $85,000 besides additional compensation at 
the discretion of the Secretary. The office of the Comp- 
troller of Currency absorbs $117,000. The Commissioner of 
Internal Revenue demands merely for office assistance, — including 
Commissioner's salary of $6,000, — $361,000. His dies, paper, 
and stamps cost $400,000. To pay throughout the country 
the different Collectors, Assessors, Supervisors, Detectives, and 
Storekeepers, the Revenue Bureau demands $4,700,000. To 
punish violators ol the Internal Revenue laws, $80 ? 000 are ap- 
propriated. The Lighthouse Board costs, to keep up the Wash- 
ington Office, $14,000. The Bureau ol Statistics costs $65,000, 
The stationery of the Treasury costs $45,000 ; its postage, 
newspapers, seals, brooms, pails, lye, sponge, etc., $65,000 ; its 
fiirniture, $25,000 ; its gas, fuel, and drinking water, $40,000. 
Besides, the Secretary is allowed $45,000 tor temporary clerks. 
Perhaps you were not aware that we have an Independent 
Treasurer in this country. We have. His office is in New 
York, and he gets $8,000 a year personally, while his clerks 
receive $140,000. The office of the Assistant Treasurer at 
Boston costs $33,000, at San Francisco $21,000, at Philadel- 
phia $36,000, at St. Louis $16,000, at New Orleans $14,000, 
at Charleston, S. C, $10,000, and at Baltimore $24,000. 
The Treasury's Depositaries require, to pay salaries, $10,000 
at Cincinnati, at Louisville $6,000, at Pittsburgh $4,000, and 
at Santa Fe $5,000. It costs $6,000 to pay Special Agents to 



SALAEIES OF OFFICIALS, 379 

examine these Depositaries. Then you come to the matter of 
Mints. The chief officers ot the Philadelphia Mint require 
$38,000 per annum, the workmen $125,000, and for incidental 
and contingent expenses, besides, $35,000, — in all about $200,- 
000. The Mint at San Francisco costs $290,000, to pay sala- 
ries and wages next year; at Carson City $90,000, at Denver 
$30,000, at Charlotte, N. C, $4,500, (provided the Mint be not 
abolished this year, as it will probably be.) The Assay office 
in New York costs $118,000, and at Boise City $12,000. On 
the whole, we pay a good deal of money in the way of salaries, 
considering we see so little coin floating around. If these 
Mint-men cannot diffuse hard money more, there ought to be 
some curtailment of their appropriations. 

Arizona costs us for salaries $14,000 a year, and there is a 
proposition also to pay its noble Legislature — that Legislature 
which fell upon the Apaches like Joal's band and slew them — 
$20,000, including their mileage. We pay Colorado, out of 
the National Treasury, $14,000, and nothing is said about 
mileage or paying the Legislature. We pay Dakota $54,000 
for officers, and $20,000 for its Legislature. Idaho gets $15,- 
000, and $20,000 for the Legislature. Montana, New Mexico, 
Utah, Washington, Wyoming, get nothing for their Legislatures, 
but cost us for officials $15,000 apiece, and the District of Co- 
lumbia costs the Federal Government, for salaries, $28,000. 

The office of the Secretary of the Interior costs, for clerks 
immediately around his person, $47,000 ; for watchmen, $21,- 
000 ; for stationery and packing, $16,000 ; and for rents and 
repairs, $26,000. The Land Office costs, for clerks, $53,000 ; 
for maps, telegraphs, etc., $244,000. The Indian Office costs, 
for salaries, $30,000, and for incidentals, $5,000. The Pension 
Office costs the extraordinary sum of $344,000, besides addi- 
tional clerks to the amount of $92,000. This office also uses 
$75,000 for stationery, engraving, printing, <fcc. The Patent 
Office costs, for salaries $319,000, besides, for extra clerks and 
laborers^ $147,000. The stationery, &c, here cost $90,000,. 
and for photo-lithographing, $40,000. The Bureau of Education, 



380 CURIOSITIES OP THE BUREAUX. 

an excrescence upon the Government, of no earthly account 
except as an auxiliary to take common-schools from the States 
and counties where they belong, and run them nationally, — 
this costs $27,000. 

Now we come to the Surveyor-General's office : In Minnesota 
it costs $8,300, and in Kansas $2,000 ; in California $14,000, 
and in most of the other States about $30,000. The interest- 
ing Department of Agriculture, whose ornament — the bleached 
Capron — has been imported into Japan as a curiosity, costs, 
for salaries alone, $75,000, for statistics and fodder for the an- 
nual report, $15,000, to scatter seeds around and put them in 
bags, $45,000. These seeds make Vice-Presidents and Senators 
when properly distributed. The Experimental Garden of the 
Agricultural Department costs $10,000, the stationery and the 
books on bugs, $23,000 ; besides, there is a gorgeous report on 
the education of oysters, and the intellectual needs of pump- 
kins, for which a monster appropriation has to be made annu- 
ally. 

The salaries of the Post-Office Department in Washington 
City alone cost above $400,000, and the building demands for 
stationery, besides, $50,000. In this particular bill, Post- 
masters are not considered. 

The War Department takes $47,000 for salaries ; $46,000 
are appropriated for examinations, and for copying from the 
Rebel archives, the Adjutant-General demands $100,000 per 
annum ; the Quartermaster-General, $18,000 ; the Postmaster- 
General, $70,000 ; the Commissary-General, $42,000 ; the 
Surgeon-General, $25,000 ; the Chief Engineer, $29,000 ; the 
Chief of Ordinance, $25,000 ; the office of Military Justice, 
$5,000 ; the Signal Office, $2,800 ; and the Inspector-General, 
$1,600. These salaries are merely for clerks and stationery 
in the Washington Offices, and do not apply to salaries 
throughout the military service. The War Department, be- 
sides, requires for rents and repairs, $44 ? 000. 



THE JUDICIARY. 381 

To run the central office of the Navy Department, where 
Secretary Robeson sits at the table with an oar in his hand, 
crying " Heave ho !" the clerks get $36,000, and billet-doux 
are written to the extent of $5,000. Then the Bureaux have 
their particular clerks. The Yards and Docks Bureau requires 
$16,000 ; that of Equipment, $12,000 ; of Navigation, $6,000 ; 
of Ordnance, $10,000 ; of Construction and Bepair, $113,000 ; 
of Steam Engineering, $8,000 ; of Provisions and Clothing, 
$15,000 ; of Medicine, $5,000, &c. 

THE JUDICIARY. 

And now we come to the Judicial part of our Government, — 
a third and co-ordinate part of the whole ; and what does it 
cost ? To pay the whole Bench demands $72,000 a year, ex- 
clusive of nine Circuit Judges, who cost $54,000 altogether. 
To pay the District Judges, and some retired Judges, costs 
$193,000, and the Court of the District of Columbia costs 
$20,000. The total salaries of all the District Attorneys of the 
United States is put down at $19,000, and of the Marshals 
also, $19,000. The Marshals and Attorneys get fees besides. 
The District Attorneys get 2 1-2 per cent, on all the money 
they recover for the country, and the District Attorney's office 
in New York City is said to be worth $30,000 a year. The 
Court of Claims, at Washington costs about $35,000, and 
$400,000 is appropriated to pay its judgments. This extraor- 
dinary clause — the only piece of light reading in the bill — is 
put at the end of the Court of Claims appropriation : 

Provided, That no part of this $400,000 shall be paid in 
satisfaction of any judgment rendered in favor of George Chor- 
penning, growing out of any claim for carrying the mail. 

The Department of Justice requires $73,000. The Solicitor- 
General gets $7,500, which is only $500 less than the Attor- 
ney-General. Each of the Assistant Attorneys-General gets 
$5,000, and the Solicitor of Internal Revenue $5,000. The 
Solicitor of the Treasury costs, for himself and clerks, $22,000 ; 



382 CURIOSITIES OP THE BUREAUX. 

three Commissioners for codifying the laws of' the United 
States cost $18,000 ; the British Claim Commission, meeting 
in Washington city at present, costs 849,000. 

The above, perhaps, dull reading, is an analysis of one of 
the large appropriation bills, and will give you some idea of 
what it costs merely for clerks, stationery, office service, and 
printing in the departments at Washington. Since that day 
back pay has been voted by Congress, and all the larger sala- 
ries increased. 

The greatest office of the Government, outside of Washing- 
ton, is the New fork Custom House. 

Consider that it employs nearly one-tenth as many men as 
constitute the regular army of the United States ! That it is 
the toll-gateway for the greater part of all the foreign cargoes 
which are poured amongst our forty millions of people ! That 
it is not only the most fruitful source of revenue which we 
possess, but also the most fruitful source of corruption ! Ten 
per cent, a head, levied upon its employees, — as was done 
every year down to the present, — will make a purse sufficient 
to carry an election in the largest community in. the Union. 
Senator Morton, of Indiana, if I am properly informed, had no 
trouble in the world to get 815,000 from this hive ot pension- 
ers to help him lose the State of Indiana at an election in 
1870. Out of this great den of revenue comes the cash which 
is mysteriously dispensed amongst us . in the critical periods of 
partisan appeal. This Custom House has always been wielded 
for party purposes, and it is said never to have had an efficient 
chief. Its director is called the Collector of the Port of New 
York. He nominally receives 86,400 a year, his Assistant 
Collector $5,000, his Auditor 87,000, and his Cashier 85,000. 
His seven deputies receive $3,000 a piece. Under him are em- 
ployed an immense number of persons, as for example, 247 in- 
spectors of one particular class, whose aggregate wages are 
$380,000 ; 120 night watchmen, getting altogether about 
$130,000 ; 100 store-keepers, who cost him, in gross, 
$150,000 ; 60 examiners, and several hundred clerks. Few 



THE EXPENSE OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 383 

of the salaries fall as low as $600, and the average salary- 
passes $1,000. Mr.. Allison, the Register of the Treasury, 
alleges, in his newest report, that one set of items show a bill 
of expenditures at the New York Custom House of nearly 
$1,800,000. Mr. Boutwell sets down the revenue derived from 
all the customs in the year 1870, at $195,000,000, which was 
ten millions more than the gross receipts of the internal reve* 
nue system. If we go back to the year 1869, we shall be able 
to see more distinctly what a great part the New York Custom 
House plays in our finance and our politics. According to the 
statistics of that year, the value of all goods now imported into 
the United States is $414,000,000 per annum. Only $42,000,- 
000 worth are entered free, i d $160,000,000 are sent to 
bonded warehouses before their duties are paid. The gross 
custom duties received on this $414,000,000 reach the heavy 
figure of $180,000,000, or nearly 40 per cent, of the value. The 
New York port enters $270,000,000 of goods per annum pay- 
ing duty, and $27,000,000 of goods duty free. Of the dutiable 
goods, $120,000,000 worth go to New York bonded warehouses, 
or three-fourths of the warehoused goods in the country. Last 
year there entered the port of New York, subject to the Custom 
House restrictions, 5,218 vessels, with a tonnage of 3,200,000 
tons, and with crews amounting to 110,000 men. This is 
equal, therefore, to the head-quarters of one of the largest 
navies in the earth. 

Speaking of navies suggests the great old Marine Barrack 
of Washington city, which few visitors ever enter. 

The marines are under the direction of the Secretary of the 
Navy, and they may be described as the military of the ships. 
They stand guard at the gangways, magazine, forecastle, navy 
yards, and navy arsenals ; are the boarding party in the ulti- 
mate collision of vessels, and in time of action they must fight 
the after-division of guns. The service, although a useful one, 
is generally considered a fancy one, and it is in request. Can- 
didates are examined for it in our day, but there are no Marine 
cadetships at West Point, and to be between the years of 20 



384 CURIOSITIES OP THE BUREAUX. 

and 25, to have a fair collegiate education and physical 
strength, are sufficient endowments. Appointees are put under 
drill, and one of the marine officers is now preparing a book 
upon the manipulation of the corps. 

There are in all ninety-two officers of the Marine Corps, 
counting the general staff; the file numbers 2,500 men. 
Privates, who formerly received 816 a month, now get $13 
only, and there is much grumbling over the reduction, and 
desertions are more frequent. A corporal only receives the pay 
of a private. Two promotions from the rank are recorded. 
The uniform of the corps is dark blue jacket and light blue 
bowsers, with white pipe-clay cross-belts, and, for dress, -the 
^rical short hat, with red fringe pompon. Sailors are sel- 
dom enlisted in the corps ; they will not i l set up " well, have 
a swagger incompatible with the noble stiffness of a true 
marine, and are averse to the service besides. The old black 
high stock forced upon the marines, to give them the quality 
of ramrodness, is, now abandoned. 

Promotion to .the head of the Marine Corps is made by 
selection, and not by seniority. 

A cosy part of the Navy Department is the Judge Advocate's 
room. Around it are a series of those old-fashioned naval 
pictures which one finds scattered through the Navy Depart- 
ment, executed in abundant blue, framed in dingy gilt, for- 
gotten as to their authors, and as to their date immemorial. 
Doubtless they were the work of some old clerk, whose amateur, 
self-learned skill with the pencil got him relief from fuller 
duties ; perhaps the work of some old salt, officer or seaman, 
who so whiled away his lazy hours while out of commission ; 
possibly wrought by some decayed or embryo artist whom a 
past secretary has salaried to illustrate our naval career. All 
through the department, these unclaimed, unhonored canvasses 
lie, with portraits of distinguished " salts " set between ; here 
Bainbridge, there McDonough, yonder Hull. It is not improb- 
•able that many of them are ascribed excellent for technical 
merits, which strike a sailor more than art ; but there they 



THE AGEICULTURAL DEPARTMENT. 385 

are, forgotten as their episodes, useless to the world of action 
as are the old swords, scimeters, hari-karis, forbidden to our 
officials, which repose in the museum of the Patent Office. 

" Judge Bolles," said I, " does anybody know what these 
old ship-scenes represent ? " 

" These in my room," said the Judge, from the depths of 
his leather-cushioned office-chair, " tell the whole story of the 
fight between the Guerriere and the Constitution. Here they 
are sailing for the action. Yonder they haul to, and the 
Guerriere opens at long distance. In the third picture, the 
Constitution being within pistol shot, delivered her first ter- 
rible broadside, In the next the Guerriere strikes. The last 
picture represents the hulk of the Guerriere, and the Constitu- 
tion turns on her heel, sailing away in victory. 

Beside the Smithsonian Institute upon this flat, and on the 
site of what has been called the "Experimental Government 
Farm," a fine new building has arisen, 170 feet long by about 
60 feet deep, made of pressed brick, with brown-stone dress- 
ings, built in the modern French "style, with steep slate roof 
and gilt balustrades and galleries. This building is to be 
occupied within a month, and the Agricultural Department 
carried out of the vaults of the Patent Office ; then the thirty- 
five acres allotted to the new department will be supplied with 
an orchard-house, an orangery, a cold grapery, and houses for 
medicinal and textile plants. The building is one of the 
simplest and purest, in a modern sense, in Washington, the 
design of a Baltimore architect. It cost $100,000. The 
Agricultural Department in toto costs about $150,000 a year, 
of which nearly one-sixth goes to the distribution of seeds. In 
the new building the happiest being will be our enthusiast, 
Townsend Glover, the naturalist, him to whom your farmers 
apply for a knowledge of what birds eat the pippin apples, and 
what worm gets into the beet-root. Glover is a Brazilian by 
the accident of birth, a Yorkshire Englishman by parentage, a 
German by education, American by adoption and enthusiasm. 
He is a singular-looking man, short, thick, near-sighted, pecu- 
25 



386 CURIOSITIES OF THE BUREAUX. 

liar, an Admirable Crichton in the practical arts. Agriculture 
has been his fanaticism for forty years. He paints, models in 
plaster, engraves, composes, analyzes, and invents with about 
equal facility. His passion is to be the founder of an index 
museum to all the products of the American Continent, from 
cotton to coal oil, from pitch pine to wine. Heretofore he has 
had only two little rooms in the dingy basement of the Patent 
Office ; hereafter he is to have a handsome museum-room in 
the new building, 103 by 52 feet, and 27 feet high. His 
objects, already largely perfected, are to methodize, by models 
and specimens, the natural history, diseases, parasites and 
remedies of every individual product in America. For example : 
A man wants to move to Nevada. What are the products of 
Nevada ? Glover has a series of cases devoted to that State, 
models of all its fruits, berries, prepared specimens of its birds, 
illustrations of its cereals, flors, grasses, trees. A small 
pamphlet conveys the same information ; the man knows what 
to expect of Nevada. A man forwards a blue bird ; is it toler- 
able or destructive, to be encouraged or banned ? Glover 
forwards the names of fruits, etc., whieh the blue bird eats. 
He will show you, in living, working condition, the whole life- 
time of a cocoon : the processes of Sea Island cotton, from the 
pod to the manufacture ; the economical history of the common 
goat ; the processes of hemp from the field to the hangman. 
Every mail brings to him a hawk, a strange species of fish, a 
blasted potato, a peculiar grass, which poisons the cow. He 
is the most dogged naturalist in the world, probably ; a wrestler 
with the continent. He is a bachelor, married to his pursuit, 
one of those odd beings hidden away in the recesses of 
government, whose work is in itself its own fame and fortune. 

A curious subject, to the inquisitive reader, was debated 
before Congress in 1871. It was the revision of the laws per- 
taining to the mint and coinage of the United States. 

This measure originated with a ■quiet and indefatigable bach- 
elor official of the Treasury Department. Mr. John J. Knox, 
the Deputy Comptroller of the Currency. He has spent almost 



THE UNITED STATES MINT AND COINAGE. 387 

his whole life in the atmosphere of banks, and, receiving a sal- 
ary of only $2,500 in a city where it costs $3,500 to live, he 
has made use of all his leisure time to put himself into asso- 
ciation with the former, as well as the present, practical men 
of the mints of the United States. 

You know what the United States Mint is — an institution 
ordained by Congress in 1792, while the Capital of the United- 
States was yet at Philadelphia. The fine body of organizing 
men who were setting the nation right at that time, resolved 
upon giving their image and superscription to the world upon 
their hard money. Th^ first Director of the Mint was the 
renowned David Rittenhouse, astronomer and mechanic, who 
made watches, orreries, telescopes, and mathematical instru- 
ments, and who went heartily to work in the new institution, 
devising machinery, organizing a clerical force, and otherwise 
establishing so handsome an institution, that, when the Capital 
was removed to Washington, the mint was permitted to remain 
in the city of the Quakers. Rittenhouse was succeeded by 
such strong men as De Saussure, Boudinot, and the two Doctors 
Patterson, father and son. These kept the mint up to a good 
standard of efficiency, but much of its machinery remains mod- 
eled upon the same pattern as the early days. This mint is a 
staid, unattractive building, on Chestnut street, and it enjoyed 
the remarkable distinction of keeping a permanent set of officers 
down to the year 1861, when, for the first time, as we grieve 
to say, the new Republican administration put its hand upon 
the Directorship of this most responsible concern, and made 
its management a part of the political patronage which curses • 
the country. 

From that mint, as the necessities of the -country demanded 
— or rather the covetousness of localities — branch mints sprang 
up in Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama, and an assay 
office was established at New York city. After the discovery 
of gold on the Pacific coast, a more needful mint was given to 
San Francisco, where really the larger part of the coinage of 
the country is now done. After a time the greed of localities, 



388 CURIOSITIES OF THE BUREAUX. 

and the growth of jobbery, gave a mint to Carson City, Nevada; 
one to Dallas City, Oregon ; another to Denver, Colorado ; and, 
finally, an extra assay office to Boise" City, Idaho. Thus the 
business of coining money, instead of being confined to one 
establishment, as in almost every other government, has got to 
be very nearly a State matter in the United States. 

According to the report of Architect Mullet, we have twelve 
pieces of Mint and assay property, which, altogether, have 
cost, or will cost, between four million and five millions of 
dollars. The New Orleans Mint, which has cost $620,000, is 
a dead loss, and of no use whatever. . The Carson City Mint, 
which was put up to tickle the Nevada silver mining interests, 
cost nearly $300,000. The Mint at Charlotte, North Carolina, 
cost upward of $100,000, and at Dahlonega, Georgia, $70,000. 
The old California Mint cost $300,000, and the new mint will 
cost more than $2,000,000. The assay office at New York 
cost upward of $700,000. Mr. Mullett's Mint at San Francis- 
co appears to be architecturally an adaptation of the Patent 
Office at "Washington, with the front of the mint at Philadelphia 
appended, and there are two large smoke chimneys in the 
centre, which give the whole thing the appearance of a steam- 
boat ready to go right off through the Golden Gate. The edifice 
is to be 221 by 164 feet in dimensions. 

As the mint edifices have been scattered, so have the regula- 
tions about the coinage fallen behind the well-organized system 
of other nations, and the final capture of the mint by the 
politicians has proved to be a serious matter. The Philadel- 
phia Mint has continued to retain a traditional supremacy, its 
chief officer being " the Director" in name of the whole mint 
system of the country, while the executive officers at the places 
are called Superintendents merely. Yet the mint at Philadel- 
phia has latterly come to be, in great part, a mill for making 
nickel pennies, and engraving medals trom the " Great Father" 
to his Indian braves, and other Generals. In 1873 the bill 
just referred to, passed, and hereafter the Commissioner of the 
Mint will reside in Washington city at the Treasury building. 



THE DETECTIVE SYSTEM. 389 

Another quaint bureau of the Treasury Department is the 
Detectives', headed by Colonel Whitely. 

The position which Colonel Whitely maintains is more impor- 
tant than any secret police agent holds in the Union. He is 
charged with all the manifold arid intricate offences against the 
currency and the Treasury, including counterfeiting, defalcation, 
whiskey, and tobacco frauds, the use of false stamps, etc. His 
headquarters are in Washington, and his main branch office 
is on Bleecker street, New York. His force is distributed 
through the Union, and the area of his personal superinten- 
dence is circumscribed only by our national boundaries. 

He is a tall, wiry, rather debilitated-looking young man, with 
a long, pale, youthful face, light eyes, and dark hair, a shy 
manner, without any worldliness in it, and a sober, modest, 
nearly clerical, black dress. He neither drinks nor smokes, 
and is as much of a Puritan as Mr. Boutwell. Whitely has 
been very successful and systematic in his operations, and he 
has a fair knowledge of the civilization of professional thieves, 
their jargon and methods, and their haunts and associates. 
With some youthful confidence and self-esteem, he is still 
thoughtful, persevering, and adroit, and, armed with the enor- 
mous moral and material power of the Federal State,' and its 
great system of marshals and attorneys, he is not subject to 
the restraints of .cross-jurisdiction and State laws, which im- 
pede the pursuit and capture of Jocal criminals. He occupies 
the whole field, and is free from the , jealous annoyances of 
police rivalry. 

If one could penetrate the Treasury building, and see the 
strange and motley character of the lesser clerks, he would 
find meat for wonder. In it, filling weary benches, are ex- 
Governors, ex-Congressmen, soldiers of rank, the sisters of 
generals like Kichardson, decayed clergymen by the score, some 
authors, many bon vivants, and, they do say, young girls with 
dangerous attractions for public atmospheres or public individ- 
uals. The population of the Treasury building ( is that of a 
good-sized town, between three and five thousand. It is, and 



390 



CUEIUSITIES OF THE BUREAUX. 



will be till war comes again, the great position -of public life, 
no sinecure, demanding profound statesmanship at its head. 
The destinies of the people lie bound up in it. It can over- 
balance all private sagacity if it be weakly administered, and 
if corruptly or partisanly, it will be our debaucher or tyrant. 

Next to the Capitol itself, the spot most consecrated to our 
marvels here is the old theater where Mr. Lincoln was mur- 
dered. The rash design, ascribed to Stanton, of leveling it to 
the ground, has happily not been approved, and in essentials of 
situation and exterior it is the same object. But all around it 
the zeal of housebuilding is at work to make the spot unrecogni- 
zable to the half-buried ghost of Booth. The alley of his bad 
escape is there and also the stable where he hid his nag, but 

the open areas and naked lots 
which lay around the old thea- 
tre and the hulks of dwellings 
are filled with brick walls and 
plaster-beds. A new Masonic 
temple faces the neck of the 
alley ; the theatre itself is pre- 
served only in its bare walls 
and these are freshly rough- 
casted, the doors and windows 
changed ; the boxes and gal- 
leries are torn out. Strong 
floors girded of iron and 
vaulted with brick replace at 
different heights the open canopy of the theatre, and iron stair- 
ways climb from floor to floor, guarded on every platform by 
one-armed soldiers standing to their crutches. The murder of 
the President still tenants the building like some lost trace of 
a skeleton hid away; or a spectre vaguely seen, but for the rest 
it is an association merely, and every day the incident grows 
less vivid and the narrative of it more wayward. But added 
to the martyrdom of the father of the people, the contests of 
tho building are now of the aggregate reminder of the bruises, 




FORDS THEATKE. 



THE ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM. 391 

wounds, and agonies of the entire struggle for the Union. It 
is the Army Medical Museum, the depository of the names and 
casualties ot every stricken soldier and the perpetual min- 
iature of that vast field of war whose campaigns of beneficence 
followed in the footsteps of its heroes, and death and mercy 
went hand in hand. 

Here are 16,000 volumes of hospital registers, 47,000 burial 
records, 250,000 names of white and 20,000 names of colored 
soldiers who died in the hospitals. Here are the names and 
cases of 210,027 men besides, discharged from the army dis- 
abled. Here are names and statements of 138,957 wounded 
men brought to the hospital, and the particulars of 28,438 
operations performed with the knife. In one year — so method- 
ized and perfect are the rolls and registers collected in this 
fire-proof building — 49,212 cases of men, widows and orphans 
demanding pensions have been settled in this edifice. If you 
look through the lower floors you will see a hundred clerks 
searching out these histories, cataloguing them, classifying 
them, bringing the history of the private soldier down to the 
reach of the most peremptory curiosity, and assisting " to heal 
the broken-hearted and set at liberty them that are bruised." 

It is this museum which is at once the saddest memorial of 
the common soldier and the noblest monument to the army 
surgeon. It contains a complete history of the surgery of the 
war, illustrated by casts, models, photographs, engravings, and 
preparations. There are here nine hundred medical patholog- 
ical preparations, and two thousand eight hundred microscopi- 
cal preparations. There is no similar army medical collection 
in the world, and from Baron Larrey down to Neleton and 
Joubert the published reports of this collection have delighted 
and surprised the savans of the world. Scarcely a leading 
surgeon in Europe but has written praises and sent them here. 

Let us see what this museum has to show us. It is a long, 
cool room, the whole length of the theatre. Show-cases extend 
lengthwise down it. Models of hospitals and skeletons of war- 
horses stand at top and bottom. The yellow standard of the 



.392 CURIOSITIES OF THE BUREAUX. 

kospital planted with the blue colors of the regiment and the 
tricolor of the nation is fixed in midground. Two splendid 
human skeletons, at full length, guard the head of the room. 
The walls are covered with large photographs, some of them 
two yards square, of the great hospitals of the war, those superb 
edifices which are now nearly all broken up. Near by are pho- 
tographs of the great army surgeons of all nations, Larrey, De 
Genette, O'Meara, and others of our own service. * A table is 
full of books of photographs of surgical operations, where, 
spent, and unshaven, the camera has been turned upon the 
amputated man's freshly severed stump and made his sufferings 
vivid forever. So are the healed and scarcely less cruelly sug- 
gestive wounds photographed with views of men in the various 
transitions between the cutting of the bullet and the final con- 
valescence. Photographs of amputating tables all prepared and 
the victim stretched out insensible almost make you smell the 
fumes of chloroform on the doctor's bloody sponge. Stereo- 
scopes are set, near by, wherein you may examine the field of 
battle with the corpses yet unburied and see the bleached bones 
of the Wilderness as the camera discovered them to make their 
profanation eternal. So may you see the decks of battle-ships, 
where they are carrying the splintered and shot-riven below, 
and the cockpits where they seek to save the remainder of the 
carcass. 

Continuing on we come to great cases of artificial limbs, 
bandages, slings, lint, and crutches. Some of these latter are 
actual crutches made of forked boughs, whereon wounded men 
hobbled unassisted to camp. After this are models of every 
sort of ambulance, stretcher, dissecting table, hospital bed, and 
the interiors of miniature hospitals, clean and sweet-scented as 
their originals. 

Then follows a long array of human skulls, some perforated 
by bullets, some staven in by cannon-balls, some fractured by 
blows from sabres, some eaten with syphilis. Afterward fol- 
lows the vast collection of preparations, dissected parts of men 
corrupt with decompositions, abnormal by neglect or the results 



THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY. 393 

of wounds, or swollen or attenuated with camp diseases and 
unwholesome food. Following these by hundreds are models in 
plaster or wax, of preparations too perishable to keep. Then 
come collections ot parasites, deposits, impassable articles of 
food found in the liver and stomachs of the dead, strange in- 
stances which fell from drinking filthy water, and tokens of 
monstrous disease or indigestion beyond the reach of the dis-' 
secting knife. Bones in catacombs come after, splintered, bro- 
ken, ill-set, amputated away from the man — whole jaws, noses, 
eyes, ears, shoulder blades, the leg from the hip-joint to the toe. 
Here is that cartilage of Wilkes Booth, broken by the ball of 
Boston Corbett. Here is a view ot Sickle's leg, amputated on « 
the field of Gettysburgh. Next are valuable cases of most 
minute microscopic preparations, a library of books, reports, 
experiments, suggestions made by the medical wisdom of the 
doctors of the war, and by this time the eye, running along so 
much that thrills it, wearies of even the fascinations ot death 
and refuses to explore these painful wonders further. 

In this museum, the war will live as long as its moral and 
political influence. This collection is worthier than the proud- 
est victory won even for freedom. It is the infiltrating genius 
of mercy, unable to prevent the blow but claiming the victim 
when he is stricken. And not less extraordinary than this 
ocular demonstration are the figures deduced from the rolls of 
the surgeons, shedding light upon the natural history of man 
at large. 

From skulls to books is an easy step. 

Right off the Rotunda, that amphitheatre of politics, the 
, Congressional library lies, its windows facing the pit of the 
city of Washington. Opposite the main door, behind a high 
table, piled full of books, sits, or stands the Librarian — a dark- 
skinned, black-haired man, perpetually at work with a pen, 
cataloguing, or, with a catalogue, directing ; and his self-im- 
posed labors are probably greater than his duties. He was 
never known to be in doubt about any volume, and probably 
never known to waste any time in mere book gossip. His 



394 CURIOSITIES OP THE BUREAUX. 

place is one for which he has personal ambition, and he indi- 
cated his choice beforehand by minute and extensive convers- 
ance with bibliography. His nights are the Government's, like 
his days ; for he has resolved, of his own will and motive, to 
catalogue this large library by subjects and by authors, and not 
merely to catalogue its books by titles, but by contents, so that 
when one is interested in a subject, he can be apprised even of 
exceptional references to it. 

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Government, as we 
understand it, was also the author of the library, and in the 
first year of this century $3,000 was appropriated to buy books, 
only 2,000 volumes of which were collected, when the British 
burnt the Capitol. In 1814, Jefferson again appeared in the 
guise of Phoenix, and offered to replace the perished library 
with his own, consisting of 7,500 well-selected volumes. The 
usual hue and cry of Federal partisans was raised, but that 
small majority of common sense patriots which comes to the 
rescue at opportune times carried the measure, and nearly 
$24,000 was appropriated to make the purchase. It was not 
until 1825 that the library obtained good housing in the central 
Capitol, and by small yearly appropriations it had grown to be 
55,000 books in 1851, when fire destroyed three-fourths of it, 
sparing many of Jefferson's books. Cut down to 20,000 vol- 
umes, its great days seemed to have passed. Congress cheer- 
fully voted within three years $157,000 to build a fire-proof 
library room, and to buy new books, but only 70,000 volumes 
had been accumulated up to the period of the war, when there 
providentially appeared an old man who had devoted sixty 
years of his beautiful and dutiful life to saving from the ravages 
of time and waste, a library of American history for just such 
an exigency. .This was Peter Force, now an inhabitant of his 
grave for nearly two years. He is, par excellence, the founder 
of the " New Library of the United States." 

Peter Force was the greatest New Jerseyman, and the ear- 
liest collector of American books and antiquities. A printer 
in New York; a resident of the Capital City half a century; 



rr ' ' ^ A 




CENTRAL ROOM, CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY,' 
CAPITOL. WASHINGTON. 



PETER FORCE. 395 

Mayor of Washington ; editor of the American Historical doc- 
uments, and founder of the American Bibliography, his rank 
in our literary civilization was more eminent than Sloane's in 
English. There is nothing more interesting and peculiar than 
to follow this grand and ardent old man through the garrets 
and attics of old colonial homes, from Maine to Mexico, dis- 
covering in chests and rubbish heaps, the precious footprints 
of our history, raising from the brink of extinction some paper, 
autograph letter, or a pamphlet which, from its mouldy pages 
threw the phosphorescent spark upon some mistaken fame or 
injured cause, and kept for man the memory of an expiring 
episode to guide or to beguile him. His venerable presence 
haunted the frequent auction sales of all the towns and cities, 
and his hand interposed between the frivolous plunderer and 
the hammer, to guard many cherished data for the State. 
He touched with his wand many young men, and they, like 
him, went groping into the garrets of the past to add to his 
collections, and at last, from every side, books, pamphlets, and 
letters were forwarded to him from gainful people, who put 
upon his sinking shoulders the duties that elsewhere are under- 
taken by the State. He labored to the end, this Noah of our 
literature, bridging over the gap of oblivion with his prov- 
idence, and his house, at Tenth and D streets, was a veritable 
ark, containing the seeds of our past species. Offers from all 
sides were made to him to sell, but he relinquished his library 
only to the United States, and then pined for its society, and 
died like the last man of the former generations. 

In all his life, but one great pain came to Peter Force. Sec- 
retary of State, Marcy, refused to accept his second series of 
American archives, probably in some pique of the politician's 
spirit, and Force declined to explain or to resume. The work 
ceased. It can never be done so well by any survivor. This 
is an episode of the old, interminable war between power and 
art — place and pride of scholarship — fought over by Johnson 
and Chesterfield, Chatterton and Walpole, Motley and Seward, 
Force and Marcy. 



396 CURIOSITIES OP THE BUREAUS. 

The Congressional Library is about 180 feet long, by 34 feet 
wide — a gallery, bent twice, so as to form a hall and 1 two 
alcoves, the hall itself 91 feet* long, and the height of all the 
three uniformly 38 feet. The hall contains the Librarian's 
desk and a few baize tables ; one of the wings or alcoves is 
exclusively for Congressmen, the other affords reading space 
for perhaps fifty people. The floor is marble ; the ceiling is of 
decorated iron, with skylights ; all the shelving is iron. The 
architecture of the room is pleasing, and the prevailing tints 
are cream-color, bronze, and gold. 

Like Georgetown College and the Smithsonian Institute, the 
Soldiers' Home of Washington is a contribution from outside 

parties. Gen Winfield Scott 

W B plFSg -„ % extorted the money with 

||j which the land was pur- 



- — - 



:^?i'" , ^f llflP cnasec l from the city of Mcx 



' kl. He" tm ico on account of the viola- 

1 IB 

1 i '}S tion of a municipal obliga- 

mSm?' % tion affecting the truce. A 

fijlf I 3 - Ijjjj very eligible site was chosen 

" ■:, ~~^s on the high ridge of hills 

3 about four miles from the 







city, and this may be con- 
soldiers' home. sidered the Central Park 

of Washington. A few cents a month is subtracted from 
the pay of soldiers to support the institution, which has 
been so well managed that in 1868 the fund was about $800,- 
000. Some of the ex-volunteer generals in Congress, who had 
no very magnanimous appreciation of the regular army, endea- 
vored to have this fund divided amonst the loosely managed 
volunteer asylums throughout the country. To prevent such 
spoliation, the beautiful estate of Harewood, belonging to W. 
W. Corcoran, was purchased in 1872, thus expanding the 
grounds to a truly ample and noble park. About the same 
time a statue of General Scott, the benefactor, was ordered 
from Launt Thompson of New York, which work was being 



THE SOLDIERS' HOME. 397 

modeled while the great equestrian statue of General Scott 
which the Government had ordered was being cast in Philadel- 
phia. This accounts for two statues of a hero of Mexico at 
the Capital. During the fierce times of the war Mr. Lincoln 
made his summer home at one of the cottages on the lawn of 
this institution, and it is a matter of tradition and general be- 
lief that one evening as he rode out he was shot at upon the 
road, but whether by assassins or mere highwaymen was not 
known. This led to his being accompanied by a small guard 
at the close of the war. From the upper windows of the 
central tower of the Soldiers' Home, a panorama can be seen 
much wider and more varied than that from the dome of the 
Capitol, including a back view of the Maryland country to- 
ward the Patuxent. Right under the eye is a very old church, 
Rock Creek, one of the old parishes of Maryland before the 
District was surveyed. This church was erected in 1719, re- 
built in 1775, and remodeled as we now see it, in 1868. Strong, 
hoary oaks surround it, and the old grave-yard is full of the 
tombs of people who lived at Washington and in the surround- 
ing country anterior to, and contemporary with, the founding of 
the Federal town. A large and neat soldiers' cemetery lies 
between Rock Creek church and the Soldiers' Home. In Sum- 
mer the drives in this region are enchanting, and one of the 
few roads in the vicinity of Washington which is passable in 
Winter and Spring for pleasure teams is that leading from 
Silver Springs toward Sandy Spring. Sandy Spring is one of 
the boarding-house settlements for Washingtonians. Silver 
Springs is the estate of Francis P. Blair, Andrew Johnson's 
official editor, who is still living in a hale old age. Between 
Silver Springs and the Soldiers' Home are the villas of Alex- 
ander H. Shepherd, Mathew G. Emery, and other prominent 
citizens of Washington. 

We will conclude this chapter with some sketch of the 
Smithsonian Institute : 

The will of James Smithson, like that of Stephen Girard, 
Mr. Rush, and many others, did not express with sufficient 



398 



CURIOSITIES OF THE BUREAUX. 



directness or coherence what he wished the United States to 
do with his money. Some members, as John Randolph, were 
opposed to receiving it on the ground, probably not wide of the 
mark, that a great nation was not a distributing reservoir for 
idosyncratic philanthropists. To add to this Mr. Smithson 
offended some of the more aristocratic members by his illegiti- 
mate descent. His original name had been James Lewis 
Macie ; his father had been the Duke of Northumberland and 
his mother the niece of the Duke. of Somerset. He was a 
scientific man of much industry and good professional acquain- 
tance. His death occurred at Geneva, Italy, in 1829. He is 







Hut H * 

f,41 J 



A 



if 




.;^-v 




SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE. 

said never to have visited the United States, nor to have had 
any friends residing here. His bequest was announced to Con- 
gress by President Jackson in 1835. The money, which 
amounted to above $515,000, in gold, was obtained by Richard 
Rush and brought to the country in 1838. This money was 
lent to the United States Government by Levi Woodbury, Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, and was invested in Arkansas State 
bonds at par. Some of this money was squandered by Senator 
Sevier, of that State, and his harpies, and the whole amount 
was lost and the bonds repudiated. Congress debated what to 
do with the bequest for several years, and between John Quincy 
Adams and Robert Dale Owen, an agreement was completed 



THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE. 399 

by which the present Smithsonian Institute was organized in 
April, 1846. Professor Joseph Henry, of Princeton College, 
New Jersey, was made the Secretary, or really the Regent, and 
Superintendent of the whole concern. This Secretary was the 
first official in Washington after the President who appropria- 
ted to himself a residence in one of the public buildings. A 
large reservation of 52 acres was selected on the knoll between 
the Tiber and the Potomac, nearly in the centre of the city. 
The architect was Mr. Renforth, of Washington, and he de- 
signed an edifice of mediaeval character, a sort of battlemented 
abbey, of Seneca redstone, with towers, chapels, etc., 426 feet 
long by about 60 feet wide. This building cost $325,000, and 
when it burned down in the war period it was again rebuilt so 
that its erection and maintenance were said in 1869 to have 
involved an outlay of $450,000. As ha^ been well said, the 
Smithsonian can be indefinitely extended, and there is archi- 
tectural reason why it should be, to eke out its shallow depth, 
in almost any mediaeval military style. 

Although a handsome object in the landscape of the city, 
contrasting well with the large classical offices of the Govern- 
ment, it is by no means a favorite with those around it. The 
interior of the building has an unsatisfying and inhospitable 
look, much of it being closed from the public and given up to 
mere inhabitancy, while the grounds around it, which, until 
recently, were separated from Pennsylvania Avenue by a 
nasty, exuding creek, were patrolled by lewd and offensive 
vagrants, who often committed outrages upon citizens ventur- 
ing to cross from one part of the city to another after dark. 
The efficiency of the Smithsonian has been much disputed, 
although it has assisted several scientific expeditions and 
helped in the publication of technical treatises. It maintains 
a very perfect correspondence with foreign learned societies 
and publishes an annual report, which is said to be a little 
more dry than the report of its associate, the Agricultural De- 
partment. Its uses are nondescript, and the average inquirer 
will give it up when he asks precisely what they are, and re- 
ceives in response a whole essay, which he cannot recollect. 



CHAPTEE XXYII. 



MY PURSUIT OP CREDIT MOBILIER. 

All previous sensations of a civil character in the history 
ot the nation were eclipsed in the years 1872-73 by the dis- 
closures which take the general name of Credit Mobilier. My 
connection, as one seeking information, with this celebrated 
scandal, may not improperly make the narrative of this 
chapter. 

It was in September, the tenth of the month, that I received 
by telegraph a commission to proceed to the State of Arkansas, 
and unravel some local mutiny there, and while making some 
preliminary readings, a second communication, fro'm another 
source, asked me to visit Philadelphia and New York. It 
became necessary, therefore, to undertake the second commis- 
sion with immediate despatch in order to improve the oppor- 
tunity for the first and more distant one. The remainder of 
this chapter is my report of Commission No. 2, as published 
in the Chicago Tribune. 

The most uneasy and serious scandal which we have yet had 
has undesignedly grown out of the lawsuit of Henry S. 
M'Comb, of Wilmington, Del., to compel the delivery to him 
of certain shares of stock in the Credit Mobilier. The suit is 
taking place in Philadelphia, which staid and respectable 
Quaker City is the only part of the country uninformed about 
this cause celebrS. The case in its context, has been charged 
to implicate two Speakers of the House of Representatives, 

(400) 



GETTING AT THE BEGINNING. 401 

half-a-dozen Congressmen, and other dignitaries. " Our 
Correspondent " in Washington was not, therefore, surprised 
to receive a telegraphic despatch, as follows : " Please go to 
Philadelphia and investigate impartially the Credit Mobilier 
affair. — Horace White." 

The diary of this pursuit, as far as the first day's prosecu 
tion is concerned, will show a novice how many things have 
to be done within a given time to answer one newspaper 
requirement. 

At early daylight (September 12) I reached Philadelphia, 
investigated the docket at the Supreme Court Office there, saw 
the counsel for the plaintiff, telegraphed the plaintiff in New 
York for a meeting, after ascertaining his whereabquts ; traced 
the Credit Mobilier back to its origin, interviewed members of 
the Legislature contemporaneous with the passage of the act, 
and, in ten hours, was on my way to New York, reading, as I 
traveled, the long report of the Credit Mobilier suit with the 
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in " Smith's Pennsylvania 
State Reports," volume 17. 

In half an hour after I reached New York, I was in con- 
versation, with the plaintiff and other authorities, and that 
night sat up to " catch the manners living as they rise," by 
jotting down the matter most easily forgotten. 

At the early hour at which I began to perambulate Phila- 
delphia, I knew of but two attorneys nearly certain to he in 
their offices, the diligent and alert Henry R. Edmunds, one 
of my old schoolmates, now full of learning and business, and 
covered with venerable red hair ; and the gristly and tough 
Joseph A. Pile, who works all night amongst the Pandects, 
and labors all day over Roman and Quaker law. Sure enough, 
there they were. 

" Gentlemen, do you know anything of the suit of Henry S. 
M'Comb, who spells the Mick without a c, the c having dropped 
out by reason of the distant period when it got in — against the 
Credit Mobilier of America ? " 

» Why, no. There's nothing in the Ledger or the Franklin 



402 CEEDIT MOBILIEE. 

Almanac about it. "We've read everything this morning but 
the obituary poetry and the editorials, which we preserve to 
the end of the year, for the solace of old age and the repose of 
children." 

" The Credit Mobilier," said the Hon. Joseph Pile, " is all 
the while here engaged in mysterious suits. They are often 
equity suits, before Masters in Chancery, or before the Supreme 
Court of the State, and everything about them is hushed up. 
Nothing much is published, and we are all in the dark. The 
State sued the Credit Mobilier for taxes, and this involved 
appeals and two trials. But we have seen no mention of any 
such case as M'Comb vs. The Credit Mobilier." 

Here the Hon. H. R. Edmunds produced a large volume of 
the Acts of the Legislature of 1859, and he said : 

" Gath, this is-the«beginning of the Credit Mobilier. It was 
snaked through the Legislature fourteen years, ago, under the 
name of the Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency." 

I took the book and made this note from it : 

The Fiscal Agency began November 1, 1859, W. F. Packer 
being Governor of the State. The " Pennsylvania Fiscal 
Agency " was incorporated, with the following Commissioners, 
or Directors : Samuel Reeves, Ellis Lewis, Garrick Mallory, 
Duff Green, David R. Porter, Jacob Zeigler, Charles M. Hall, 
Hon. R. Kneass, Robert J. Ross, William T. Dougherty, Isaac 
Hugus, C. M. Reed, William Workman, Asa Packer, Jesse 
Lazear, C. S. Kauffman, C. L. Ward, and Henry M. Fuller. 

The act of incorporation was of the most general and dis- 
cursive character, and covered all operations under the sun, 
banking, opening of offices in foreign lands, funding State 
debts, assuming the responsibility for corporation debts, guar- 
anteeing bonds, etc. It provides that the general offices shall 
be in Philadelphia, and that a certain proportion of the 
Directors shall be citizens of Pennsylvania. This act is in 
six clauses, and it provides that the corporation shall consist 
of 50,000 shares of $100 each, and that when 5,000 shares are 
subscribed, and 5 pe? cent, thereon paid, the shareholders may 



THE PENNSYLVANIA FISCAL AGENCY. 403 

elect five directors and begin business. The Fiscal Agency, 
therefore, contemplated a capital of 15,000,000, but required 
only $25,000 to be put up in the first place, and all facilities 
were given for watering the stock, etc. The State was to be 
entitled to a tax of one-half a mill on capital stock for each 1 
per cent, of dividends. 

And this little charter, said our correspondent, brought to 
life one year before the election of President Lincoln, is the 
foundation of the stupendous Credit Mobilier, which, as an 
alias of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, robbed the 
generous Age and Nation which endowed it, and bribed the 
Congress of the people ! 

"It had to stand a suit two years ago," said Mr. Pile, "for 
taxes due the State under the charter, amounting to above 
half a million of dollars. All tax-suits of this sort are tried 
in Dauphin, the county of the State Capital. The Company, 
then under the alias of the Credit Mobilier, beat the State, 
reversed the decision of Judge Pearson, and paid nothing. 
You will find the suit here in Volume 67, Pennsylvania State 
Reports." 

" And here," said Mr. Edmunds, is the continuation of the 
Fiscal Agency in a report only five years old. It put off its 
old apparel and took a disguise." 

Our correspondent then copied the original act by which the 
State gave the Fiscal Agency extended powers to veil the 
operations of the Union Pacific Railroad Ring : 

" Laws of Pennsylvania, 1867, page 291, Act No. 278. 

" A further supplement to the act to incorporate the Penn- 
sylvania Fiscal Agency, approved November 1, 1859, empower- 
ing said Company, now known as the Credit Mobilier of 
America, to provide for the completion of certain contracts. 

" Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of 
Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in 
General Assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the 
authority of the same, That, in every case where the Credit 
Mobilier of America — a body corporate established by the laws 



404 CREDIT MOBILIER. • 

of the Commonwealth — has heretofore agreed, or shall here- 
after agree, to aid any contractor with a railroad company, by 
advancing money to such contractor, of by guaranteeing the 
execution of a contract, for the building, construction, or 
equipment of a railroad, or for material or rolling-stock, it 
shall be lawful for the said Credit Mobilier of America to take 
such measures as will tend to secure the full and faithful per- 
formance of the contract ; and the said Credit Mobilier of 
America, may to that end, appoint its own officers, agent, or 
superintendent, to execute the contract in place of the con- 
tractor so aided or guaranteed, — saving, nevertheless, to all 
parties, their just rights under the contracts, according to their 
true- intent and meaning. 

(" Signed,") ' 

"John P. Glass, Speaker, H. K..," 
"L'otjis W.Hall, Speaker, Senate." 
" Approved, the 28th day of February, A. D. 1867." 

" John W. Geary, Governor." 

" You will find out here," said my informant, " that nothing 
ever leaks out about the Credit Mobilier. Ben. Brewster is 
their attorney, and the papers are taken out of court, so that 
nobody can get at them. I don't believe that any considerable 
; portion of the Bar knows anything about the suit of M'Comb 
vs. The Credit Mobilier." 

Our correspondent now set out to find somebody familiar 
with the Legislature at the period of the passing of the Fiscal 
Agency Act, so as to understand how this doppelgauger cor- 
poration, came into the world. All inquiry was answered by 
the name of Colonel A. R. McClure, as the person who had, 
at the time specified, been an attendant or member of the 
State Legislature. 

Colonel McClure, a little grayer and redder in these cam- 
paign-times than of old, being full of patriotism and public 
speaking, said as follows : 
■ " The Fiscal Agency began in the vagary of old Duff Green, 



THE INCORPORATORS. 405 

Tyler's editor, who was a visionary man ; and the Legislature 
humored him by the presentation of the charter he solicited. 
He came to Harrisburg in the fall of 1859, without a cent, 
and being a kindly old bore, whose name and years were 
venerable, he wormed the charter from the members by per- 
sonal solicitation. We all supposed that he wanted to assume 
the consolidation and care of our State debt, which is divided 
up in parcels, and scattered around in many forms. The 
charter got irom Duff Green into the hands of Charles M. 
Hall, who sold it to the Credit Mobilier people, — some say to 
their proxy, George Francis Train. Hall is a creature of 
Simon Cameron, and was made Postmaster of Philadelphia 
under Johnson, and rejected." 

" Is that the way, Colonel McClure, that charters are bought 
and sold in this State ?" 

" Precisely. No business man thinks ol applying for a char- 
ter, and hazarding blackmail. He goes into the street, and 
buys some oi the many charters which have been issued to 
charter-jobbers, and cover all forms of corporate enterprise, 
from raising wrecks to funding the debts of nations. If we are 
fortunate we shall get a General Incorporation Act passed in 
the next State Constitution, and so dispense with the present 
peddling in nondescript charters." 

" Will you please tell me whether you know any ol the 
names of the ' Commissioners ' or incorporators under the 
first charter,— that of 1859 ?" 

" That is not vital," said Colonel McClure, " as none of 
these men are retained in the Credit Mobilier. However, 
Samuel J. Peeves is a wealthy iron-man of this city ; Ellis 
Lewis was Chief-Justice of the State ; Garrick Mallory was a 
great lawyer here ; David R. Porter was the father of Horace 
Porter, Grant's Secretary ; Jacob Zeigler was Clerk of the 
House ; H,orn R. Kneass was a city politician ; Robert J. Ross 
is a banker at Harrisburg ; W. T. Dougherty is the brother of 
another banker there ; Isaac Hugus was a Democratic State 
Senator and Cameron man ; C. M. Reed lived at Erie ; Asa 



406 CREDIT MOBILIER. , 

Packer is the Lehigh millionaire ; Jesse Lazear was Congress- 
man from Greene County ; C. S. Kauffman was in the Legis- 
lature from Lancaster ; Henry M. Fuller was a Native Amer- 
ican Congressman ; and C. L. Ward, an operator of Towanda, 
is dead. The names in the Credit Mobilier are mainly ' blinds,' 
set up to stand for other people. The Fiscal Agency was a 
chimera ; the Credit Mobilier entered the skin of it as the 
devils possessed the crazy man." 

" Have you read the exposure of the (Congressmen in the 
suit of M'Comb against the Credit Mobilier ?" 

" Yes. It's true. The only names that surprise me there 
are Dawes and Boutwell, because both are too shrewd. My. 
experience in legislative things and corporations teaches me 
that the continuous legislation required to accomplish all the 
purposes of the Union Pacific Railroad, could not have been 
attained without bribery in the highest seats. Only the influ- 
ence of the highest leaders could have passed such rapacious 
acts through Congress, and no men of reputation would have 
pressed them upon their colleagues except By pecuniary inter- 
est. The letters of Ames are recognized as perfectly valid, and 
M' Comb's reputation in the middle States is that of a gentle- 
man who will not lie. The people implicated, who have been 
quaking over the probability of these exposures, must be reliev- 
ed that they have come." * 

Our correspondent now visited the office of the Clerk of the 
Supreme Court, in the venerable State House row. It was a 

* The New York Sun published the Credit Mobilier, exposure in the 
month of August, 1872, having, it is said, purchased a copy, surreptitiously 
taken from the Commissioner's ©ffice. The vital part of the abstracts pub- 
lished -were some letters of Oakes Ames to Henry S. M'Comb, saying that 
he had " placed Credit Mobilier Stock in Congress wliere it would do the 
most good," and stating the number of shares allotted to each qj certain 
States. A memorandum taken by M'Comb from Ames's pocket-book indi- 
cated that the Congressmen implicated were Dawes, Eliot, Blaine, Bout- 
well, Kelley, Schofield, Fowler, Patterson, Garfield, H. Wilson, Bingham, 
Colfax, and Brooks. 



GETTING AT IT. 407 

little old hole, and two white-haired old parchment men were 
moving around the dockets, exceedingly impertinent as to the 
case we were looking for. As we approached the Credit 
Mobilier, everybody's spectacles seemed to take a jump, and all 
the venerable ears flapped like a puppet's when you pull a 
string. There was a smell of old sheepskins, and an impres- 
sion of obsolete styles of stenography all' over the place. 
Everybody looked like aged phonographic characters in 
motion. 

Our correspondent got behind the docket-desk, and over- 
hauled the ponderous manuscript tomes. After looking 
without reward for a while, he took up an equity docket, and, 
on page 313, found the long-expected case of M'Comb vs. The 
Credit Mobilier." 

It is set down for the January term of 1869, number 19 in 
order. About the whole of one of the great folio pages is 
covered with the successive dispositions of the case, as it is 
now continued, now put over, now referred, and again post- 
poned. The last entries show that, on the 20th of April, 1872, 
J. E. Gowan, for plaintiff, had the time extended for closing 
plaintiff's testimony 90 days from date ; and that a further 
extension of 60 days had also been granted. The case, there 
fore will go over the Presidential election, as both set of litig- 
ants are Grant people. He polls the undivided vote of the 
Credit Mobilier, who think Greeley will not be a " Safe Pre- 
sident " for such operations as theirs. 

The defendants enumerated in this suit are as follows : 
Sidney Dillon, John B. Alley, Roland G. Hazard, Charles 
McGhrisky,* Oliver W. Barnes,* Thomas Rowland, Paul Pohl, 
jr.,* Oakes Ames, Charles H. Neilson, Thomas C. Durant, 
James M. S. Williams, Benedict Stewart,* John Duff, Charles 
M. Hall, and H. G. Fant. 

The five names to which the asterisk is affixed are stool- 
pigeons, put on by Ames & Co. For instance, Thomas Row- 
land is a shovel-maker and compeer of Ames in the same 
business, and a quiet country-side man in a hamlet near Phila- 



408 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

delphia. The names of McGhrisky, Barnes, Rowland, Pohl, 
andNeilson were afterwards indicated to me by M'Comb as of 
no potency or presence in the inside affairs of the Credit Mobil- 
ier. Another suit had been in process from October 3, 1868, 
a period of four years, and another commentary upon the end- 
less career of Chancery proceedings. Involving only $300 3 000, 
here were four years' work put upon this single piece of litiga- 
tion, r Verily, one might say, in a paraphrase of Mr. Lincoln : 
" Even so ; if every dollar taken by the swindler must be re- 
placed with another taken by the lawyer, still we must cry : 
' The judgments of the Lord are good and righteous alto- 
gether.' " 

There have been, at various times, employed by Colonel 
M'Comb, as plaintiff in this case, such counsel as William 
Strong, now Judge Strong, of the United States Supreme 
Bench, Jeremiah S. Black, and James E. Gowan. It is at 
present managed by S. G. Thompson, son of the Pennsylvania 
Chief-Justice Thompson, as associate of the Hon. Jeremiah S. 
Black. The defence is entrusted to Robert McMurtrie, who 
stands at the head of the Philadelphia Bar; as successor to 
John O'Brien, James Ottarson, and other less lawyers in the 
same case. This would seem to show that Dillon, Alley, Ames 
& Co. mean to contest strenuously the claims of M'Comb. 

It appeared that the Court had appointed A. W. Norris to 
take testimony in this proceeding in equity ; and searching out 
Norris's whereabouts, I found that he occupied the office ot 
S. G. Thompson, the plaintiff's counsel. The next step was 
to see whether Norris, or Thompson, or both, would satisfy a 
laudable curiosity, and give me the testimony to consume, 
assimilate, and exhale. 

Behold our correspondent, therefore on the way to the office 
of Thompson with a p. 

There are periods in life when the p in Thompson's name 
appears to be an insurmountable barrier. Such was the pre- 
sent. The mind of the correspondent, in its anxious, not to 
say precipitate condition, transferred to the p all that might be 



VISITING THE COUNSEL'S OFFICE. 409 

« 

obdurate in mankind, and in Thompson individually, and fond- 
ly imagined that, if he had spelled the name in smooth, flow- 
ing fashion, Thomson, — with no thump to the pronunciation 
of the same, — he could have been a man of genial inclina- 
tion, and those conversational talents which aie conducive to a 
great deal of newspaper information unconsciously. Mentally 
assured that the p in Thompson's name would not permit him to 
be an obliging man, I took the precaution of stopping at the 
telegraph office and sending a message to Wilmington, Del., 
to inquire the whereabouts of Thompson's client, Colonel 
M'Comb. 

Arriving at Mr. Thompson's office, I recognized in him an 
acquaintance not far from my own age, and then I despaired. 
The newspaper profession, abused as it is, is the only one where 
a man never puts on airs over being the repository of anything. 
He sheddeth and imparteth like the gentle dew of Heaven 
upon the place beneath, even if a person of the same age 
should occupy the place. The only thing in which he is per- 
fectly at home is instruction. But your lawyer delights in 
magnifying his mission, and the extent of the confidence re- 
-posed in him. In Thompson's manner there was a deep and 
bibliological mystery, associated with a covert and gentlemanly 
sense of delight that he had come to be an authority. At first, 
the social animal, beaming and gladsome (I say gladsome, 
because nobody ever knew a lawyer to be really glad) , Thomp- 
son in a minute divined my errand, and asserted the counsel. 
"What a dulcet sound to the young and ardent lawyer lies in 
that word, Counsel. Behold him, referring to his grandfather 
in a subdued tone, but with more or less apparent solemnity, 
as "my client." Observe him step in advance of the pris- 
oner at the dock, saying: "'Sh! 'Honor, I appear as counsel 
for the prisoner ! " Nothing in life becomes him like these 
occasions, and, in the presence of a newspaper man, Thompson 
was now all counsel. 

" I think I know your purpose," he said; " it is the Credit 



410 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

Mobilier case. I am in an embarassing position as to that. I 
am — ahem ! — I am counsel for Colonel M'Comb." 

" Yes. But like Captain Cuttle when Sol Gills left his last 
will and testament, I say where's the testament, — the testi- 
mony ? " 

" A part of it has got out. Col. M'Comb has written to me 
to ask how it did leak out. Do you know a man named 
Gibson ? " 

"Yes. Gibson is the industrious mouse. He published 
eleven columns of this testimony in the New York Sun, as 
well as the Ames letter and memoranda." 

"There is a person of that name," said Mr. Thompson; I 
suspect I know how the letters got out. A man came to me 
with a letter from Judge Black. Perhaps I don't know. I 
think I do." 

There was great and impressive mystery at this point. Mr. 
Thompson fell to examining a copy of the New York Sun in 
my possession. He read it all over as if he had never before 
beheld it. He smiled a counsellor-kind of smile at times, as 
if he had recognized something. The counsellor finally told 
me the trial had been long because all equity proceedings are. 
so; that, when Judge Strong had charge of it, he could not 
take any step without consulting with Judge Black ; and that 
Colonel M'Comb had refused to leave the Ames letters, in their 
original, with the testimony, but had copies made. He said 
that the Ames letters were in existence ; that the implication 
of puDlic men appeared not yet to be exhausted ; and that I 
could see the testimony r with an order from M'Comb. As I 
left the office, Mr. Thompson said: 

" If you printed the testimony and letters, and all the people 
in the country read them, it wouldn't change a vote ? " 

" Perhaps not. But it is a horrible admission to make about 
one's countrymen. Nothing changes votes in this Christian 
age, but money and patronage ; is it so ? " 

I made up my mind that the part of the testimony already 
published, had first met the eye of Jerry Black, and that he 



STARTING TO SEE M'COMB. 411 

had let it out to a reporter, who got access to the manuscript, 
and hastily copied or imitated such parts as he wanted. It 
also occurred to me, if any of the immaculate men referred to 
in that list of the bribed, had, all the while, been conscious 
that Jerry Black was aware of the purchase arid sale, and that 
young lawyers had also found it out, and that the area of ex- 
posure was inevitably widening toward explosion, how disturbed 
at times must have been their sleep ! The sleep of the dis- 
tinguished hypocrite, what agony it must be of nights ! To 
know that, in the hands of remorseless men there is a secret ; 
that all time and occasion press nearer and nearer to its 
revealment; that come it must, and that it must be met. 
Such is the modern Eugene Aram in high places. But then 
"it wouldn't change a vote ! " Yes, it will. Not this year, 
perhaps, but the next or the next, and it will change history, 
too, and men's conception of man, and the man's happiness, 
and the children's heritage of honor. Politics may apologize 
for bribery, but the dead corpse will be apparent the longer it 
is kept. No political party in the world can reason away the ! 
conclusion that, if a trusted statesman sold his vote and influ- 
ence, the public faith, and the public law, and all the while 
played the outward part of piety and honor, he did a thing of 
infamy, and lived a lie, and his face will be turned to the wall. 
Finding that the Colonel, the plaintiff, was not in "Wilming- 
ton, but in New York City, I telegraphed to No. 20 Nassau 
street, and, in half an hour, got ah answer, giving me his 

. address, and saying he would see me. I bought the State 
Beport with the long Credit Mobilier case in it, to read on the 
way, and was soon in the midst of a mass of villany. What 
things people will do to make money! Half the world, it 
would appear from the law-book, ought to be in the penitenti- 

_arji~._ Here is a charter begged by a poor old man for a vision- 
ary end, or, perhaps, to serve some scheme of rapacity never 
developed, which, stamped with mendicancy at its birth, goes 
through the stews of politics and commerce, and becomes at 
last the bawd of men to whom this country has been generous, 



412 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

/ selecting them to lay a path between the coasts of the Conti- 
nent, 'and liberally advancing them money and credit to per- 
form the work with conscientious celerity, and make their lives 
useful and their names renowned. With the spirit of Joseph's 
brethren, they hasten to put the heir in the pit, and institute 
therefor a bastard corporation, parasitical in its nature, which 
shall eat the life of its wholesome brother, and divert the rev- 
enues and gifts of a "highway whose achievement the world 
admires, into 'a mere " fence," or receiving-shop for stolen goods. 
Having succeeded in this, beyond the usual fate of roguery, 
they nest turn about and swindle the Commonwealth, which 
gave them the bastard charter, out of above half a million of 
taxes. Such was the purport of the long report I read on the 
way to New York City. Prosperous we are indeed, but at 
\ what moral cost ? Will the world believe that, while we were 
waging a warfare with the slavery of the whole body, we were 
making the patriotism in whose name we fought, a cover for 
such crimes as the Credit Mobilier ? 

The Pacific Railway exists ; but the corner-stone of the 
masons thereof was plunder. 

At 9 o'clock I walked into the great commercial, social, and 
gamester's market in New York, the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and 
soon afterward the handsome Colonel Harry M'Comb walked 
in. 

He had been a. poor boy, native and now citizen of Wilming- 
ton, Del. Handsome and prepossessing from his childhood up* 
he was prosperous enough, when the war began, to become a 
merchant in supplies, and distinguished himself by the energy 
and resolution with which he competed with men of greater 
capital, and wider reputation. He is said to be the richest 
man in Delaware, the Duponts probably " excepted," and his 
business at home, in Wilmington, is the tanning of leather. 
With an orthodox education, and the best social connections 
in a quiet and virtuous community, he superadds to the dashing 
contractor and merchant, the semi-Southern tone and spirit of 
genial address, magnanimous personal impulses, the touch of 



COLONEL HARRY M'COMB. 413 

honor, and the carriage of a man of the world, yet heedful of 
his reputation. Nature designed him for a large part in life ; 
he is the equal of any to whom he speaks, and courteous to all. 
In New York he takes a rank relatively as high as at Jiome. 
Invincible, imposing, cool, agreeable, he is the least provincial 
and the most exalted of men of his class. He is portly, care- 
ful of dress, loud in nothing, with bonhommie, natural intelli- 
gence, and ease. 

" Our correspondent" at once made known the object of his 
errand, and the conversation which followed is here set down. 
An interview such as follows, often does injustice to a public 
man by the unavoidable misplacing of the order of questions 
and answers, so that statements often appear climatic, and 
things take context of themselves, and give impressions which 
the just order of the dialogue would not show. The subjoined 
is believed to be a fair and candid relation of this interview: 

" Colonel M'Comb," said our correspondent, my errand is to 
get from you the impartial truth as to the revelations of late 
made concerning the sums of Credit Mobilier stock allotted to 
members of Congress about the year 1868. You have seen the 
published extracts and the printed memorandum made by you 
upon the back of a letter from Oakes Ames, in which memo- 
randum 2,000 or 3,000 shares, respectively, are set down to 
these persons: Blaine, Colfax, Boutwell, Garfield, Kelley, Bing- 
ham, Senators Patterson, of New Hampshire, Fowler and Henry 
Wilson ; Schofield and Kelle^ the deceased member Eliot, and 
Henry L. Dawes. I wish Xxj know if this is a hoax or a re- 
ality. I also wish permission, as so much has been said already, 
to see the testimony." 

Colonel M'Comb: "I have given my testimony before the 
Commissioner to take it by appointment of the Court. The 
letters from Oakes Ames are in my possession, and copies of 
them have been taken in the testimony. But I was surprised 
to see the letters and several columns of the testimony printed 
here in the public papers, and disclaim any agency in that reve- 
lation. It would not be proper for me to give you an order to 



414 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

see the testimony, unless Mr. McMurtrie, counsel for the de- 
fense concurred." 

"But why permit these terrible excerpts to go broadcast, if 
they are not parts of the testimony, to do injury to eminent 
and innocent people ? 

Colonel M' Comb : "They are parts of the testimony, and 
that is the reason why I can have no hand in anticipating their 
inevitable publicity. Somebody in your profession has had 
access to the Commissioner's manuscript, and taken that part 
of the evidence, sometimes copied it witli haste, and often 
without accuracy, and again attempted to condense it. Helms, 
besides, copied injurious parts without the link between. But 
what is printed is substantially there. I endeavored to keep 
the names of those gentlemen back, but Mr. Oakes Ames was 
perfectly indifferent to the exposure of his friends. He is 
about to retire from Congressional life, and will take no step to 
cover anybody's nakedness. 

" How did you seek to avoid this disclosure ? " 

Colonel M'Comb : " In the first place, I tried to have the pro- 
ceedings before a private Board of Referees or Commissioners, 
to be named by the Court, both parties to the suit consenting. 
They had all along been saying that my suit was merely a 
blackmail operation ; and, when I brought it to trial, and ex- 
pressed my willingness to put it in arbitration, Ames, Alley, 
Dillon, and the rest, cried : ' Oh ! he will never dare to put it 
in open Court ; he has no case, and shows that he has none by 
making it a private trial ! ' I was thus forced to bring open suit 
in the State Courts of Equity. I laid my papers of all sorts, 
which bore reference to this suit, before my counsel, Judge 
Black. He read them over, and said: ' M'Comb, these men 
will never dare to let this case come to trial with these reputa- 
tions involved in it.' But they did, and fought and defied it at 
every step. Finally I came to a spot where, in the cross-ex- 
amination, these letters of Oakes Ames were vital to my cause, 
and I again notified Alley and the rest, that I should be com- 
pelled to put them in. Ames knew all about their contents, 



WHY M'COMB PRODUCED THE FAMOUS LETTERS. 415 

but he did not move one step. I produced them after repeated 
taunts to do so, and a transcript of them has come to light, as 
could not, probably, be avoided. I have no hesitation in saying 
that, had I been assisted by gentlemen as Ames was, I should 
have made every sacrifice rather than betray them, as he has 
permitted the course of this suit to do. With all of those 
gentlemen we stand upon terms of fair fellowship, and most of 
them are our party friends." 

" There is no- politics in this suit, then?" 

Colonel M' Comb: " None whatever ! I told the editor of 
your paper, at the Brevoort House, last July, that I could not 
support Greeley ; that Grant was not my first choice, but that 
I could not be convinced to vote for Greeley. The suit in which 
I am plaintiff began before. General Grant had fairly got into 
his office. It is for a direct and considerable money-loss which 
Oakes Ames obliged me to make by his bad faith, — a loss 
which is not merely in stock not delivered, but stock which I 
took from my own share to keep a contract with a friend. The 
letters of Ames belong to this suit, showing that he professed 
to divert my stock to Legislative uses, and act as the trustee 
for those Congressmen to whom he presented it ; and the 
memorandum on the back of one of these letters shows that 
just the amount he took from me he put to the account of the 
persons thereon named. The names he read to 'me from a 
memorandum book, and I wrote them down in the office as he 
dictated them. They remain as they were put on that letter, 
many seasons ago, and 1 repeat that, if I had not got those 
letters in at the time I put them in, they would not have been 
in order subsequently." 

" How came you to lose your own stock through Ames' con- 
fiscating yours ? " 

Colonel M'Comb : " It happened in this wise : Hamilton G. 
Fant asked me to take up for him, when I came to New York, 
$25,000 worth of Credit Mobilier shares. I gave the order for 
it, and told Crane, the secretary, to draw on him for the money. 
They said they did not know much about Fant, and preferred 



416 CKEDIT MOBILIER. 

my check. I got a power of attorney from Fant to make the 
purchase, but the power of attorney was bad in form, and 
Crane, the Secretary of the Credit Mobilier, made out a new 
and correct power of attorney, — which is a link of evidence in 
my suit. 1 got a. certified check of my own, and paid for the 
stock. This check was mislaid in the office ; and when, after 
some time, it was discovered that Fant had not paid for his 
stock, the Company drew a draft upon him for the amount. 
His circumstances had meantime changed, and the draft came 
back protested. The Company now notified me that they ex- 
pected me to pay the draft, and this led to a search for the cer- 
tified check, which came to light. At this period I was called 
away, and was absent some time — some three or four months 
— attending to matters in a distant quarter. But I had prom- 
ised Mr. King, of Massachusetts, to deliver to him $25,000 
worth of stock, and expected to give him Fant's stock. Oakes 
Ames, however, would not deliver to me Fant's stock, and, in 
excuse, showed me' in the registry-book that he had disbursed 
the $25,000 amongst the members of Congress aforesaid. I 
was, therefore, forced to take of my own Credit Mobilier stock 
$25,000 worth at the original valuation, and deliver it to 
King. My suit is for this stock, and the dividends which it 
produced. Whether Oakes Ames kept it, or paid dividends in 
bonds or money out of it to others, is not my business to in- 
quire. I want what is mine." 

" How does Fant's name appear in your suit added to the 
list of defendants ?" 

Colonel M'Comb : " They had arranged at one time to get 
Fant on their side, to rout me in the suit, and I put him in 
with .the rest." 

" Are not some of the names of the defendants used as mere 
blinds ? " 

Colonel M'Comb : " Yes. Rowland, Pohl, and several others 
are of no note in the Credit Mobilier." 

" Who got the charter for the Credit Mobilier ? " 

" George Francis Train got it for Durant, who paid him 
$50,000 for it." 



CREDIT MOBILIER. 417 

" Why do the Ames party dislike Durant ? " 

Colonel M'Comb : " They were jealous of him, and have 
been slandering him for several years, saying that he is dis- 
honest ; that he made away with bonds, earnings, etc. At one 
time, I was induced to believe these things ; but I found Du- 
rant had more brains and more honesty than their party." 

" Is the testimony of Ames, Alley, and others, in the suit of 
the State ol Pennsylvania for taxes, reliable ! " 

Colonel M'Comb : " No, it is all false. They swore they 
made no dividends, when Ames' letters to me assert just the 
contrary." 

" Colonel M'Comb, what does this line mean in the memo- 
randa as published: 'Painter (Rep.) for Quigley, 3,000?' I 
know who Painter is, and suppose the ' Rep.' means reporter. 
Who is Quigley ? " 

Colonel M'Comb: "Quigley is a townsman of mine, in 
Wilmington, Del. That has been erroneously copied from my 
memoranda in the Sun. The reporter who took it down for 
that paper must have been nervous, and he has made several 
mistakes. The names of Painter and Quigley belong to an- 
other memorandum. They are interested with me in the canal 
property between Washington and Alexandria, a piece of prop- 
erty owned and controlled by myself, Ames, Quigley, and some 
others. The figures 3,000 at the end ot each name do not 
signify shares in the Credit Mobilier, but dollars' worth 
of stock. If you look at the published memoranda you 
will see that no word occurs after these figures. It is 
true that $3,000, at the rate of profit obtained by the stock- • 
holders, would come to about $18,000. Therefore, the $25,000 
worth of stock which Oakes Ames says he held as trustee for 
the Congressmen named would be worth many times its face. 
I held my suit for this stock in the Credit Mobilier to be far 
above $300,000. That represents, as near as may be, the 
whole of the divided sum, provided Ames paid it to them, set \ 
down in that memorandum to the Congressmen implicated. I J 
feel distressed at the publicity given to this thing, on account 



418 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

of their reputations, and the annoyance it gives to these gentle- 
men ; but I have done all in my power to get what is due me 
without taking this step." 

"Will you give me an order upon your counsel, S. G. Thomp- 
son, to look at the testimony taken before the Commissioner, 
A. W. Harris ?" 

Colonel M'Comb: " I will, if you get a similar o»der, or the 
consent of Robert C. McMurtrie, the counsel for the other 
side. But I do not want to be a party to any political designs 
which may be based upon the testimony, and my position as 
plaintiff is too delicate to take the advance in throwing that 
testimony open to the reporters. The fact is, Mr. McMurtrie, 
defendant's counsel, is now in possession of all the testimony ; 
he borrowed it some time ago, and keeps it under the excuse 
of wishing to read it carefully." 

" Where is Oakes Ames ?" 

Colonel M'Comb: "He is coming to this city to-morrow. 
If he denies those letters, I shall feel myself at liberty to let 
you see them : and, if you can get an authorized denial from 
him that he wrote them, I will give you an order on Thompson 
to look at the manuscript." 

Colonel M'Comb then said: "What use do. you propose to 
make of all this matter you have been gathering up in Phila- 
delphia and New York ?" 

Correspondent: "Print it all to satisfy the wholesome inquis- 
itiveness of the period, pin the responsibility where it belongs, 
and let people unfairly implicated explain their way out. 
The matter is certainly the greatest of all Congressional scan- 
dals. If Gollaclay, Whittemore, and such poor shoats are to 
be expelled for selling West Point Cadetships for a few hun- 
dred dollars, don't you think Speakers of the House, Senators, 
and sijch magnates ought to be brought to the bar of public 
opinion for abetting a swindle like the Credit Mobilier, pushing 
private mortgage ahead of the Government's first mortgage, 
and otherwise prefering the claims of a corporation to the rights 
of their country and the tax-payers ? " 



CREDIT MOBILIER. 419 

Colonel M'Comb : " Well, I have no responsibility in this 
personal part of the suit ; and I tell you now that, if my object 
was merely scandal, I could produce a letter not yet printed or 
proffered in the testimony, which would extend the area of 
implication, draw in other names of persons not suspected of 
collusion in any gainful matter, and make the present unfortu- 
nate disclosure secondary only." 

" Has Oakes Ames no feeling for his colleagues in Con- 
gress ?" 

Colonel M'Comb : " No. Selfishness is implanted in Ames 
on the widest scale. He lias the hide of a bull. If he had the 
sentiment of honor he would do anything, — leave the Country, 
—father than put the past services of his friends to the test." 

" What were the circumstances under which you took that 
memorandum ? Please repeat it." 

Colonel M'Comb : (t Why, I took it from Ames himself, he 
reading from a memorandum which he took from his pocket, 
to account to me for the stock he would not furnish, and, by 
accident, I made the memorandum at that moment on the back 
of one of Ames' own letters to me, — the same which has got into 
the testimony. That is how the thing leaked out. The letter 
was coerced from me in the course of litigation, and being dis- 
covered, the memorandum was made public with it." 

" Then the weakness of the evidence is in the fact that you 
alone wrote the memorandum, and nobody can get the stock- 
register to confirm your memorandum. At the same time, the 
very incompleteness of this evidence at law will be moral proof 
to thousands of men. It lacks the lawyer's arrangement, but 
what is missing in evidence carries most conviction." 

Colonel M'Comb : " Ames might have made a false entry 
of the names of the Congressmen, or he might have dictated 
entries of names not on the register. I had no suspicion of 
such possibilities at the time. We were on fairly amicable 
terms, members of the same Company, and he read straight 
on, giving me time to copy the list." 

" It seems to me, Colonel, that you are employing a formid- 



420 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

able array of counsel for a very doubtful consequence. What 
do Ames, Allen, Dillon & Co. care for the Credit Mobilier char- 
ter now, having worn it out, and having no responsibility within 
the State of Pennsylvania longer? The Credit Mobilier has 
about wound up, has it not ?" 

Colonel M'Comb: " No. It is still worth three millions of 
dollars at least, and its charter is worth preserving." 

" Are you still a stock-holder?" 

Colonel M'Comb : " Yes. I possess six [or sixty, corre- 
spondent not certain] shares, and my suit is not to get in, but 
to get my proportion of what I have paid for." 

" Is Oakes Ames worth anything ?" 

Colonel M'Comb : " Yes. Three or four millions." 

While a part of the above conversation was taking place, two 
gentlemen sat beside Colonel M'Comb and our correspondent, 
viz: H.D. Newcomb, President of the Louisville and Nashville 
Railroad, and Josiah Bardwell, an owner of Credit Mobilier 
stock. 

Colonel Newcomb informed me that Mr. Bardwell invested 
$50,000 in the Credit Mobilier, and that his- net drawings 
thereon had amounted to $360,000. Mr. Bardwell is a stout, 
brown-whiskered gentleman, and he said, pleasantly : 

" Gath, you ought to go and talk to Oakes Ames to-morrow. 
He will talk freely. He don't care." 

" How much do you infer," said Mr. 'Bardwell to ' our corre- 
spondent,' " were the proceeds or profits of Credit Mobilier 
investments ?" 

Applying the information derived only a moment , before on 
the other side, our correspondent answered : 

" About six or seven for one, — say on an investment of $5),- 
000, about $360,000 net !" 

This shot seemed to tickle Mr. Bardwell, and he laughed in 
a serio-comic way. 

" Well," said he," provided that is true, we took a good deal 
of risk." 

" Yes," said another, " I wish I had some of that risk. The 



CREDIT MOBILIER: 



421 



stock and the dividends I don't mind, but I am quite put out 
that I didn't get some of the risk." 

Here there was a general laugh. , 

Colonel Newcomb said, directly, — no other person at the 
moment present : 

" What surprises me most is, that the newspaper profession, 
with all its acuteness, did not discover this matter long ago, — 
four years ago, — it being an old subject of conversation amongst 
railway men and operators. You will observe that Speaker 
Blaine denies that he ever received or owned any stock or 
money in the Credit Mobilier. My understanding is, that no 
stock was given, but that the dividends were in the bonds given 
to the Railroad Company, which in turn became the dividends, 
etc., of the Credit Mobilier. A man set down as having an 
interest would merely be presented with bonds at periods when 
dividends came to be declared, and some of the earliest of such 
dividends would clear off his stock of indebtedness." 

It was now near midnight, and the company separated. 
Colonel M'Comb said, before going to bed : 

" I have talked more to-night on this subject than I have yet 
allowed myself to do. Three New York newspaper men have 
been to see me to-day, and I have refused to speak, being already 
annoyed at the publication of my garbled parts of evidence, 
and at the appearance of Ames' letters. There, for example, 
is the letter of Crane, the Secretary of the Credit Mobilier, 
which is omitted. I did not want anything published, and the 
omissions and the publications are equally annoying. I have 
told you this to satisfy you that I am merely going straight on 
to get my dues in a business suit, and am no politician at any 
time. I shall vote for General Grant, and could never vote for 
Greeley anyway." 

" Why ?" 

"He is too much of a whirligig. Good-night." 

Wondering if Greeley were more of a whirligig than the 
Credit Mobilier, which began with Duff Green, passed along to 
George Francis Train, fell as a family chattel into the hands of 



422 . CREDIT MOBILIER. 

Tom Durant, was gobbled up by Oakes Ames, Sidney Dil- 
lon, and John B. Alley, and has finally become a bombshell in 
Congress, exploding the caucus, our correspondent also retired 
to his room, made his notes, and composed himself to rest, 
congratulating himself that he had deserved well of his coun- 
try. 

The above was the first letter published confirmatory of the 
disclosure from a principal. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



CREDIT MOBILIER BROUGHT TO BAY. 

Perhaps nothing in American history will bear comparison 
with the Credit Mobilier as a drama in which all the human 
emotions have been played upon from farce to tragedy. The 
subject is of the grandest area, and the conspiracy within it 
close and criminal "as in any scheme of treason aimed at a 
great empire. Look at the dates, and see what they imply : 

In the Summer of 1862, a Pacific Railroad was empowered 
by Congress. In 1869 the road was built, and cars were 
running from New York to San Francisco. In 1872, ten years 
after the Government exercised its generosity, the chief 
builders and capitalists of the enterprise appeared like common 
criminals at the bar of public opinion, and the highest heads 
in Congress were dragged down for complicity in their crime. 
Two separate investigations were held in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and one in the United States Senate. Two mem- 
bers of Congress, Oakes Ames and James Brooks, and one 
Senator, James W. Patterson, were reported back for expul- 
sion. But public opinion was so far from satisfied, and 
Congress so wholly demoralized by apprehensions of other 
exposures, that neither House took definite action, and Con- 
gress adjourned under a cloud, and the entire country, which 
had just passed through a presidential election, was overcast 
with doubt, shame, „and indignation. The two members 
marked for expulsion died in little more than two months 

(423) 



424 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

and within a few days of each other. It is true that one of 
them was a sufferer from bodily disease, and the other was an 
old man, but the public superstition connected in their obitu- 
ary the tragedy and its context, and not all the funeral pomp 
could clear the stigma from the dead, nor obtain a revocation 
of public sentiment in favor of the score or more men who had 
been members and Senators, and had abused the magnificent 
dowry of the nation. Almost while the funeral services of 
Brooks and Ames were being said, the United States Govern- 
ment was filing complaint and bill in equity at Hartford, 
Connecticut, May 26, 1873, in the Circuit Court of the. United 
States, against " The Union Pacific Railroad Company and 
others," of which a newspaper despatch said: 

" This marks the opening of the great legal struggle between 
the Government on one side and two of the greatest and most 
extraordinary corporations ever created on the other, and will, 
beyond doubt, occupy some of the attention of the Courts for 
ten, perhaps twenty, years to come. It is, unquestionably, the 
most gigantic litigation on record, and the printed complaint 
and exhibits appended thereto, twenty-five in number, make a 
book of 134 printed pages. 

" The total sum to be accounted for will, if a verdict be 
given against all the defendants, be probably not less than 
$25,000,000, and interests in the litigation may be transmitted, 
in all likelihood, to the second generations of the posterity of 
some of the parties defendant." 

An examination of this bill shows that it makes defendants 
not only about one hundred rich individuals but also the 
following corporations : the Union Pacific Railroad Com- 
pany, a corporation created by acts of Congress of the 
United States, whose principal office for business is located 
at Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, and its President, 
Horace F. Clark, of the city, county and State of New 
York ; the Credit Mobilier of America, a corporation cre- 
ated by the Legislature of the State of Pennsylvania, and 
located in Philadelphia, in said State, and its President, 



THE DEFENDANTS IN THE, SUIT. • 425 

Sidney Dillon, of the city, county, and State of New York ; 
the Wyoming Coal and Mining Company, a corporation organ- 
ized under the general statutes of the State of Nebraska ; the 
Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, a corporation 
organized under the general statutes ol the State ol New- 
York, and its President, John Duff, of Boston, in the State 
of Massachusetts ; the Pullman Palace Car Company, a cor- 
poration transacting business in Chicago, in the State of 
Illinois, and its President, George M. Pullman, of Chicago; 
and the Omaha Bridge Transfer Company, a corporation 
transacting business at Omaha, in the State of Nebraska. 

Amongst the individual defendants are ex-Congressman 
Henry M. Boyer, and Helen Boyer, his wife ; William Tracy, 
the executor of Congressman Brooks, deceased ; General G. 
M. Dodge, and Anne M. Dodge, his wife; the widow of ex- 
Senator Grimes ; and very many ex-Congressmen and hitherto 
respectable citizens. 

The United States attorneys claim in one paragraph of this 
bill that the following extraordinary state of morals and 
finance prevails, in the Union Pacific Railroad Company : 

" The Union Pacific Railroad Company is insolvent. The 
cost of the railroad and telegraph line was considerably less 
than one-half the sum represented by the aggregate of stock 
and other pretended liabilities of the company outstanding. 
The largest part of the stock and bonds of the company before 
mentioned was issued, in the name of the company, by -its 
managers, not in the interest of the company, but to enrich 
themselves in a manner and for purposes unauthorized by law. 
A large majority of the stock now habitually voted upon as of 
right, in electing officers and controlling the affairs of B the 
company, is stock issued in a manner not authorized by law, 
and which was never paid for, in cash or in any other thing of 
equivalent value to the company. A large part of its income 
is used habitually in paying its managers high interest and 
commissions on loans, and in paying interest on bonds issued 
unnecessarily, without lawful motive or adequate consideration. 



426' CREDIT MODILIER. 

" The earnings have not been sufficient to pay accruing 
interest on its floating debt and on the several classes of bonds 
issued by the company. Ten millions of dollars of its income 
bonds, so-called, will be due in September, 1874 ; but no fund 
has been provided or is accumulating for either new ties and 
rails or payment of said income bonds. Interest on United 
States bonds issued to the company is allowed to accumulate 
without payment, as before stated. The company is insolvent, 
and obliged to depend on temporary loans to save its obliga- 
tions "and promises from dishonor. Its principal managers 
treat it as depending on their personal credit to save it from 
bankruptcy, and make profit by loaning it money for high 
interest and commission." 

The Wilson Committee of Congress showed that the Credit 
MobilieF~conspirators made at least twenty-four millions^ of 
money beyond a liberal profit by contracting with themselves, 
not only to build the road, but to rob it in every possible man- 
ner after it should go into operation. The rapacity and wealth 
of the conspirators, and the general demoralization of American 
commercial and political society at the time, involved a whole- 
sale purchase of engineers, examiners, Congressmen, news- 
papers, cabinet officers, state governors, and judges. Society 
stood back appalled, unwilling, but compelled to believe the 
disclosures, and there can be no doubt that Republican 
Government lost the faith of many thousand men and women. 

Let us look at the two railway companies which interlink 
midway from the one highway to the Pacific. 

The Central Pacific Company at the West End sprung out of 
the needs of California, and the yearning of all the people and 
capitalists there to have quick and reliable connection with the 
bulk of their countrymen in the East. The Union Pacific 
Road, on 'the contrary, did not aim to give relief to a rising 
nation of people, by affording them an outlet to civilization, 
but it was simply a tie which should bind the Central Pacific 
to the country east of the Missouri. This intervening country 
was without large towns, and, indeed, without any population 



THE REAL OBJECT OP THE UNION PACIFIC. 427 

to speak of, except the few herders of cattle, and some isolated 
band of miners. The Union Pacific Road,' therefore, did not 
. promise to become, in a short time, a profitable highway to its 
devisors. It tumbled into the hands of certain lobbyists and 
Congressmen, who were much more concerned to make some- 
thing out of its construction than to build it up into a property, 
and wait, like the Central Pacific people, for the business to 
increase, the country to fill up, the mines to grow profitable, 
and the freights and passenger-travel to yield their legitimate 
award. The Union Pacific Railroad did not break ground 
until the 5th of November, 1865, — nearly two years after the 
Central Pacific had resolutely driven the spade, and looked with 
courage, almost beyond hope, at the steep sides of the Sierra 
Nevadas. To build the Union Pacific Road was a much lighter 
task than to lay the Central Pacific. On the former lines the 
long level plains and steppes afforded such easy accommoda- 
tions for railway builders that it is a matter of history how 
even six miles a day of track were laid when the work had 
been fully undertaken. The Union Pacific Company laid but 
forty miles of track up to January, 1866 ; but, in that inter- 
val, and after it, the incorporators of the road found out an 
opportunity to make money more easily than by patient pro- 
cesses. 

When the Credit Mobilier, so called, had been created, to 
receive the proceeds of the Government bonds, and sieve the 
same into the railroad through the pockets of the manipula- 
tors of the Mobilier, they warmed up, and were able to lay 305 
miles of road in one year, 235 in the next year, and finally, to 
complete the road, for the whole 1,085 miles, by the 10th of 
May, 1869. The Union Pacific Road retains to the present 
day 1,032 miles of road lying between Ogden and Omaha. It 
received a vast subsidy in land from Congress, besides such a 
stupendous bonded aid that, by the testimony of experts, it was 
able to lay the whole line within the amount in cash realized 
from the sale of its bonds, put a large fortune in the hands of 
everybody who belonged to the Credit Mobilier, and receive. 



428 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

besides, the whole of its land-grant, as a clear c margin of 
profit. * 

The scandals which accompanied the building of this road 
are, perhaps, forgotten by many of the old generation, and are 
scarcely known to tens of thousands ol the new generation 
which has arisen since the Pacific was opened. The traveller 
over the line at this day will observe that, whenever a rich 
piece of level ground is attained, the road begins to snake around 
like a great brook which draws water from every spring ; and 
sometimes the eye is bewildered to see what appears to be an- 
other railroad, parallel with that on which he travels ; but the 
information is soon afforded that it is the same piece of road 
he had gone over half an hour before. If he asks why it should 
be so crooked, the answer will be : " That was a part of the job." 
The Union Pacific Company let out the building of the road to 
its own contractors, under the name of the Credit Mobilier ; and 
they had no desire to make a short line where it was easy lay- 
ing track, because they received so much per mile in bonds 
from the United States, and whenever they could build the 
road for less per mile than the bonded aid, they went winding 
round and round, like a circle, and put the overplus in their 
pockets. 

" But," you will ask, " was the Government so blind that it 
could not see that a swindle was being perpetrated upon it in 
describing three sides of a square to get the distance of the 
fourth side ?" 

" Yes," will be the answer ; " but the road will be ex- 
amined by persons selected at the suggestion of the Company, 
and these were induced to report that everything was cor- 
rect." 

All the above is literally true, as any' man knows who has 
crossed the plains. The time between Omaha and Ogden 
could be greatly decreased had this railroad been laid on the 
thrifty principle of a responsible organization and honest en- 
gineering. Begim as a job, the Union Pacific Railroad soon 
failed to be of interest to those who had prostituted the Govern- 



THE BIG SWINDLE. 429 

ment Charity, after it was opened. While the Central Pacific 
Road, of which it is the receiver, is a splendid piece of proper- 
ty, with its stock jealously kept in the hands of its original 
conceivers, the Union Pacific has several times changed owner- 
ship, President after President going out ; and the scandal of 
its management was so notorious that the Tammany Hall 
Judges thought it would "come down" easily and pay them 
black-mail. So Judge Barnard put it into the hands of a 
receiver in New York, and had its safe broken open with cold- 
chisels and gun-powder. 

At Saratoga, during the trial of Judge Barnard, Horace F. 
Clark, an associate of this road, was put upon the stand, and 
asked to give testimony concerning the Credit Mobilier. He 
declined to say anything about it, asserting that all he knew 
was hearsay and not evidence, and refused to bring the books 
of the corporation, which are now in the city ol Boston, within 
the jurisdiction of the State of New York. Hence the mystery 
involving the Credit Mobilier, — which we may call, for short, 
the ring of Union Pacific Directors and stockholders, who get 
the bonds, put the road down cheaply, and filch the remainder 
of the aid Government gives them, — and the difficulty of get- 
ting at any of the facts, although the people know that one of 
the most monstrous and impudent swindles ever perpetrated 
upon a magnanimous Nation was the act of that Union Direct- 
ory, of which Oliver Ames was President and Oakes Ames the 
Congressional Agent. It will ever be a subject of scandal to 
an inquiring posterity that Schuyler Colfax, as well as his 
successor, James G. Blaine, kept at the head ,of the Pacific 
Railroad Committee in the House of Representatives, this 
Oakes Ames. He^ was a large, heavy-set, secretive shovel- 
maker, from the Taunton District of Massachusetts, who kept 
his pocket full of free passes over this railroad, and dealt them 
out judiciously to whoever might be able to do him either good 
or injury. A member of Congress, and as such obligated to 
protect the State in its property in the Pacific Railways, Oakes 
Ames was, all the while, a member of the Credit Mobilier, and 



430 CEEDIT MOBILIER. 

a brother of the President of the road. He never made a pro- 
position concerning this road which did not become the law or 
the observance by act of Congress. He carried through Con- 
gress a scandalous proposition by which the Government 
abandoned its first mortgage of this highway, and allowed the 
private mortgage bonds of the Railroad Company to take pre- 
cedence, and crowded- the Government with a second mort- 
gage. He was able, with the help of the most eminent men in 
the Republican party, to collect from the United States the 
gross sum for carrying the mails over this road, while, at the 
same time, he never paid the interest on the Government 
bonds as it accrued. In short, the Union Pacific Railroad 
first begged a loan from the United States of Jrom„ = sixteeit4o 
sixty thousand dollars a mile, and then robbed it of the. inter- 
est on the loan, forced the loan itself back to a contingent 
place, and pasted it over with another, and a private loan of 
its own, and then swindled it out of the whole gross sums for 
the mail service. • 

^During the time that these robberies were taking place, and 
the Credit Mobilier could be daily heard to chuckle as it re- 
ceived Government bonds, a great deal of wild and florid gam- 
mon was poured out upon the country. Our attention was 
called to the giant pines of California, whenever we proposed 
to look down to the ties, and see where our money had gone. 
If we presumed to ask when the road, under good manage- 
ment, might pay for itself, we were directed to spend no time 
upon such mercenary amusement, but to look, instead, on the 
splendor of Yo Semite Valley, and the wonderful apricots in 
the region of Los Angeles. There was so much drumming, 
and fifing, and fuss, and palaver, kept up ^about this glorious 
achievement (which was the easiest achievement ever under- 
taken by civilized man, when he had the money in his hands 
to do it with), that the imagination of the country was carried 
away from the solid business which belonged to the undertak- 
ing, and now, after many years of mystery, a private law-suit 



WHAT 0AKE8 AMES' LETTERS SHOW. 431 

in a secondary city proves that murder must out at last, 
and that what is so ugly can never be wholly concealed. 

The Cs£dit Mobilier, it appears, built nearly the whole of the 
Union Pacific Railroad, or 1,038^ miles, which was a little 
more than fhe Union Pacific now retains. It really built 1,035 
miles, but sold to the Central Pacific subsequently all that por- 
tion of the road between Ogden and Promontory, and now 
owns less, by 6J miles of rails, than the Credit Mobilier, its 
stool-pigeon, built. For this 1,038^ miles of road the Credit 
Mobilier got United States bonds, amounting to more than 
$27,250,000, besides 12,080,000 acres of land. Upon this land 
were issued 7 per cent, land-grant bonds, to the amount of 
$10,400,000. The capital stock of the Credit Mobilier, mean- 
time, was 37,000 shares, at a par value of $100. . Exactly how 
designing and successful this transaction was, has come out in 
the letter of Oakes Ames to H. S. M'Comb. According to 
Ames' own admission in this letter, the Credit Mobilier paid 
less tb.£n $25,700 a mile to build the highway, or, in gross, 
$25,900,000. The letters from Oakes Ames are valid and un- 
doubted ; they are written by him, and appear in his hand- 
writing ; they were indited in the due course of business, and 
are now about four years and a half old. They show the 
secrecy, the Jesuitry, and the ingratitude of the corporation 
which could receive such an amount of help, and abuse the 
Government's confidence ; and they show, more than all, that 
it was a member of Congress who wrote these letters, and he 
implicated, in all secrecy and seriousness, men whom the 
country has delighted to honor. 

The country owes nothing perhaps to Henry S. M'Comb, who 
was one of the Credit Mobilier men, for having been the means 
of showing up their system of plunder. It seems that M'Comb 
was a fellow capitalist with Thomas C. Durant and joined Du- 
rant' s faction when the Mobilier people got to cheating each 
other. Durant had been a physician in the western part of 
Massachusetts, but he had too much worldly enterprise for 
professional life, and took to railroad contracting. He observed 



432 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

the drift of opinion to be in favor of a railway to the Pacific, 
and put himself forward in the project, but being a reckless 
speculator, without conscience toward his creditors, hi« country, 
his friends, or his friend's wife, he had no sooner become 
Vice-President of the Union Pacific railroad, than he sent 
George Francis Train to Pennsylvania to buy him one of 
those floating charters by which our modern legislatures em- 
power gamblers to cheat mankind. The name of Credit Mo- 
bilier was derived from a stock gambling corporation which 
existed in Paris during the reign of Napoleon III. Had the 
Pennsylvania legislature possessed anybody of general reading, 
and been particular about honesty, it would have suspected a 
corporation with such a title. Durant got his charter at such 
a time as to show that he meditated a swindle from the begin- 
ning. He gathered around him a set of loose law-defying con- 
tractors, men of means and vigor and associated these with 
him in the Credit Mobilier. Then the company moved to New 
York so as to get out of observation in Pennsylvania, and 
when one of Durant' s clerks by the name of Hoxie, a man 
without means, had been given by the Union Pacific Company a 
contract to build 246 miles of road, Hoxie transferred the 
same to Durant, and Durant to the Credit Mobilier. At this 
time the whole Union Pacific Company had paid up but $218,- 
000. The object of getting the Credit Mobilier charter was to 
protect themselves individually as partners for debts. As the 
Credit Mobilier, they turned around and bought the $218,000 
worth of stock aforesaid. The Union Pacific stock was then 
watered one thousand per cent., and thus the Credit Mobilier 
ate up the Union Pacific Company. The Hoxie contract at 
$50,000 per mile was now fulfilled in a cheap way, at a cost of 
$27,500 per mile, including equipment. About 350 miles of 
road were built in this way, of which 58 miles alone netted the 
Crexlit Mobilier more than a million and a third dollars " with- 
out any consideration whatever." August 16, 1867, the Oakes 
Ames contract was made for 66.7 miles, at from $42,000 to 
000 a mile, the Government meantime paying $96,000, in 



1 



ACTUAL COST OF THE ROAD. 433 

all about $48,000,000. The Credit Mobilier now handed over 
to Ames the absolute disposition of the Union Pacific railroad. 
Ames associated with himself an ex-Congressman from Mass- 
achusetts named John B. Alley, and Messrs. Bushnell, Dillon, 
M'Comb, Durant and Bates, the core of the Credit Mobilier. 
The chief Engineer, Granville M. Dodge, was bribed with- one 
hundred shares of Credit Mobilier stock, placed in the name of 
his wife. The profit under this contract was nearly $30,000,- 
000, in stock, cash, bonds, &c. In the same way the Davis con- 
tract was made, on the same terms as the Ames contract, for 
125 miles. The committee of investigation, headed by Hon. 
Jeremiah M. Wilson, reported on the above contract as follows: 

Your committee present the following summary of cost of this road to 
the railroad company and to the contractors, as appears hy the books : 

Cost to railroad company. 

Hoxie contract, $12,974,416.24 

Ames contract, - 57,140,102.94 

Davis contract, 23,431,768.10 

Total, - - - - 93,546,287.28 

Cost to contractors. 

Hoxie contract, $7,806,183.33 

Ames contract, - 27,285,141.99 

Davis contract, 15,629,633.62 

50,720,958.94 

42,825,328.34 
To this should be added amount paid Credit Mobilier on 

account of fifty-eight miles, ----- 1,104,000.00 

Total profit on construction - - - - 43,925,328.34 

It was while Oakes Ames was in the enjoyment of these 
contracts, that he was a member of Congress, and to smootli 
his path there, he gave stock in the Credit Mobilier Company 
in small sums to a large number of members, and outside 
people. His method was to hold the stock in their names, 
privately, but himself trustee, and known as such within the 
Mobilier Company. It was this very stock which led to a law- 
28 






434 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

suit in the courts of Pennsylvania, by Henry S. M'Comb. 
Ames and his clique had fallen out with Durant, and his 
clique and the latter were discontented to see so much plunder 
falling to their opponents. M'Comb affected to believe that 
Ames had never paid the Credit Mobilier in question to 
Congressmen, or to put the proceeds in, his own pocket. He 
therefore laid damages at a very considerable amount, and 
found it necessary to sustain his case, that he should put in 
the Transcript some private letters which Ames had written to 
him. These letters involved the reputation of Congressmen. 

It appears that Ames, being of a dull unsensitive nature? 
paid little heed to the consequences of such publications, and 
his coterie, of, which the head was John B. Alley, supported 
him. An attempt was made, however, to get the originals out 
of M'Comb's hands, and make way with them. It appears 
that with rare delicacy M'Comb had merely put in copies and 
omitted altogether the memorandum of names of Congressmen. 

Here is the letter of Ames' counsel : 

M'Comb vs. C. Mobilier. 

Philadelphia, May 21, 1872. 

Dear Sir : On Thursday, the 23d, you have appointed to close the 
cross-examination of Mr. M'Comb, and to proceed with your evidence. 

Allow me to remind you of promises made by your client at the prior 
meetings, many months since, to furnish or produce the papers or doc- 
uments from copies of which he spoke, or referred to, or memoranda 
taken from them. Some at least were to be sent me next day ; none have 
been sent. He stated the other day that they had been withheld for a pur- 
pose. I must ask that you will require him to produce at the meeting on 
Thursday, if you desire me to cross-examine, the following : 

Letters from Oakes Ames in reference to the distribution of 345 shares 
as gifts to members of Congress : 

His books showing the original entries and dividends, or sums, stated to 
have been received as dividends — April, 1866; July, 1866; September, 
1866; December, 1866; and January, 1868. 

I would also like to have a copy of Mr. Ames' letter, April 13, 1867, 
(exhibit No. 2, A. W. N.) 

Very truly 

(Signed) R. C. McMurtrie. 

To Jas. E. Gowen, Esq. 



THE INVESTIGATION MADE PUBLIC. 435 

But M'Comb made McMurtrie take copies in his presence, 
and copy one letter at a time. The manner of McMurtrie when 
he saw such letters did exist, was that oi a man deceived by 
his own clients. 

Ames said to M'Comb, when asked it he did not value the 
reputation of his friends : 

" I don't care whether you put the letters in as evidence or" 1 
not. Everybody knows that Congressmen are bribed." 

After these letters became evidence, it was inevitable that 
they should appear in print. They did appear in some myste- 
rious way and made great scandal. After a long and most 
awkward silence, suspicious denials of their validity appeared 
from Ames and other parties. Ames argued that he had never 
sold or presented a share of stock to any member of Congress, 
— a piece of unblushing falsehood, as he has himself shown 
under oath. The denials of the others were made under a 
mistaken idea that the thing would blow over after the political 
campaign, and that meantime it would pass as mere vitupera- 
tion of the canvass. The names of Grant and Wilson, it was 
thought, would prove all-protecting ; 

Ulysses ! name that charms our fears, 
. That bids our sorrows cease ; 
'Tis music in the sinner's ears, 
'Tis life, and health, and peace ! 

After the election was done and Congress met, the word Mo- 
hilier was raised again, and the quickened consciences of some 
of the members showed in their troubled talk, and walk, and 
countenances. A Democrat was now r known to be in the case, 
and the Poland Investigating Committee met with closed doors. 
The news leaked through the cracks and keyholes. A savage 
speech made by James Brooks against M'Comb on the floor 
contemporaneously with a screed of evidence from John B. 
Alley under oath in the darkened Committee-room, only whetted . 
the public interest. A cry arose for " Open doors ! Less white ■ 
wash and more fumigation !" 

Then the sick men who groped their way about the Capital 



436 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

City would have been the pitied of men and angels but for that 
speech ot , Brooks' against the Government witness, which had 
closed the gates of mercy. The fatal truth, half told, came 
forth at last from the lips of Oakes Ames. That shovel-iron 
statue spoke like the sire of Fredolin, cursing his posterity. 

It may be asked why James Brooks was put forward by the 
Credit Mobilier people to make a speech against McComb. The 
fact was that Brooks, under the guise ot an aristocratic and 
strictly honorable member Of the opposition, had been robbing 
the Union Pacific Company all the while. He had secured 
from Andrew Johnson as a Democrat the appointment of Gov- 
ernment Director of the Union Pacific railroad and in that 
position was not allowed to be a stockholder, or interested in 
any way in the corporation. But with a vicious and dishonest 
nature he used his power all the more to extort from the con- 
federates stock in both the Union Pacific and Credit Mobilier 
Companies, and the very bonds of the United States which he 
was appointed to protect. Public guilt was never less undoubt- 
edly shown in any government. With his honors, riches, and 
age all to protect, it may be imagined that Brooks was more 
apprehensive than any living man of the consequences of an 
investigation. He was so nervous about the matter that he 
betook himself to the old newspaper mode of silencing an 
enemy by ruining his character. This he attempted to do be- 
fore Congress came together by concerted attacks upon M'- 
Comb, comparing him to Jim Fisk and Judge Barnard. When 
the Investigating Committee met with closed doors the guilty 
man heard almost immediately that his villainy had been put 
in evidence. He could not stand and wait ; for he knew that 
now his only escape was in loud and brawling defiance. He 
claimed, therefore, the privilege of a personal explanation, and 
delivered a personal attack upon M'Comb too ingenious to be 
honest and too cowardly not to provoke response. M' Comb's 
friends at once demanded the opening of the doors in equity to 
a witness so grossly, and as they claimed so unjustly, maligned 
by a member pleading his privileges. There was an agonizing 



AMES REFUSES TO SHIELD THE MEMBERS. 437 

time in Congress when the proposition was made to open the 
doors and men of both parties struggled hard to keep them 
close. But a paralysis had fallen upon the body. They saw 
the full galleries and knew that all the country was looking in, 
and although the Committee itself protested that a secret ex- 
amination would be the best, it was ordained that the public 
should know all about the matter. 

Induced to believe that Mr. Oakes Ames would shield him- 
self and them, several of the members sent him word or inti- 
mated in person that they wished him to exonerate them as far 
as possible. For some days he seemed to desire to do so, but 
being an old man, of a bluff, ingenuous nature, he finally grew 
ashamed of duplicity and enraged at the evident disposition to 
make him a principal and a perjurer besides. He and Mr. 
Alley therefore changed face upon their dupes and friends 
and corrected their statements. Mr. Colfax, Vice-President 
of the United States, and Mr. Patterson, U. S. Senator from 
New Hampshire, were ruined in the sequel after an agonizing 
effort to perplex or compound Mr. Ames. Mr. Kelley, Mr. 
Schofield, Mr. Garfield, Mr. Allison, Mr. James Wilson, com- 
monly called "The Singed Cat " of Iowa, and one or two 
others were scathed a good deal by the evidence. The Com- 
mittee reported in favor of the expulsion of Brooks and Ames 
from the House, and the Senate followed up the report by enter- 
taining another investigation, whereby Senator Patterson was 
named for expulsion. These proceedings did not satisfy the 
public and an effort was made in the House to censure Messrs. 
Kelley, Garfield, Samuel Hooper, and even Speaker Blaine. 
Against the latter, Mr. Job Stevenson of Ohio hurled a bitter 
piece of invective, and Mr. Speer of Pennsylvania debated the 
complicity of two of the others. The whole subject was dis- 
posed of by censuring Ames and Brooks, both of whom died 
of the shock and other ills in little above two months. Mr. 
Patterson left^the Senate by the expiration of his term, seeking 
in vain afterward to have his transaction and character vindi- 
cated. Mr. Colfax went out of office morally ruined and men- 



438 CEEDIT MOBILIEB. 

tally wrecked. He had maintained a semblance of purity and 
frankness for so many years of general consideration that the 
knowledge of his corruptibility and his painful exhibition of 
falsehood under oath gave the country a blow. 

Some scenes in this investigation may be sketched rapidly 
just as they were taken in my note book at the time. 

The Committee-room where the half-dozen gentlemen who 
had been appointed to seek out the why and wherefore of the 
railroad bribery met for one hour or more every forenoon 'is at 
the foot of a long flight of dark stairs which lead from the Ro- 
tunda to the floor usually called the crypt, or cellar. At the 
foot of these stairs, a lighted corridor, whose cheerful appear- 
ance does not deprive it of a certain dungeon-like look, — pro- 
bably the effect of the consciousness of the heavy weight sup- 
ported above, and of the broad and solid walls, and piers, and 
window-sills in view, — leads to the Committee-room. 

Within the Committee-room the atmosphere and air imme- 
diately change for the better. A good grate-fire burns under 
a symmetrical, old-fashioned mantel of white marble, above 
which is a mirror of the largest proportions. Opposite the 
mirror is a book-case filled with law-calf-bindings ;' and down 
the floor, lengthwise between the fire and books, runs a baize 
table surrounded with arm-chairs. Nearest the door half-a- 
dozen newspaper-writers are seated around the end of this 
table. 

At the other end is the Chairman of the investigation, 
Judge Luke Poland, of Vermont. Merrick and Niblack, the 
two Democrats, sit to the left hand of Judge Poland, and on 
his right is Mr. McCrary, of Iowa. These seem to be the 
chief members of the Committee who are paying any attention 
to the proceedings. McCrary, Merrick, and Poland do all the 
questioning. 

Next to Niblack sits Henry S. M'Comb, and sometimes 
Judge Black and Lawyer Smithers occupy a place at his side. 
Mr. Smith, the official reporter, sits on the opposite side. Next 



JUDGE POLAND. 439 

to McCrary, facing M'Comb, are the two inseparable compan- 
ions, Ames and Alley, the Massachusetts Dromios. 

Around the chamber are half-a-dozen or dozen reporters and 
idlers. The Court proceeds in the most informal, but in the 
quietest way, and progress is made slowly. 

Judge Poland looks like a French Marquis. He is a tall, 
aristocratic-looking old gentleman, with full white hair, and 
full white side- whiskers combed forward. His nose is straight 
and long, and his profile handsome ; but, when he turns his 
full face, he seems to carry a mouth full of tobacco, and speaks 
with a sense of apprehension that some of it may spill. His 
method is courteous nearly to a fault, and slow to irritation ; 
but, as there is nothing of the demagogue or sensationalist 
about him and as he is what he appears to be, a kind and gen- 
erous old gentleman, all look with confidence to his return of 
the facts in their spirit. Alley began by talking down every- 
body, and was interrupted at no time, except when he was 
slavering Ames all over with praises, when Niblack said : 

" Mr. Alley, how many monuments do you want to have 
erected to Mr. Ames ?" 

Persons coming into the Committee-room for the first time 
are wont to say : 

" Who is that fine-looking man across the table ? " 

" Henry S. M'Comb ! " 

" That M'Comb ! Why, I expected, from what Brooks said, 
to see a monster." 

Yes, a man in the o'er ripe prime of life, alert, rosy, cor- 
dial, perceptive, and so unusually handsome as to imply a social 
importance chiefly, whereas there is an engine at work all the 
while within the man, and half-a-dozen different fly-wheels. Not 
a fully educated man, he compensates for it by native graces, 
and the acquaintance since boyhood with people of culture at 
home, and men of power throughout the country. In the social, 
intellectual, and material scale, M'Comb is the superior of any- 
body who has lost time seeking to impeach him. 

Oakes Ames is a very large man, of the type of a Yorkshire 



4~40 CREDIT MOBiLIER. 

manufacturer, gnarled, spectacled, with great, bent shoulders, 
a slow walk, and prodigious limbs and feet. He will probably 
weigh 280 pounds, and he looks to be 6 feet 2 or 3. He has 
strong, coarse, brownish hair, and bristly beard around the 
long, sternwheeled shaft of his jaws. His forehead is low, and 
the nose seems to be half ot the face. The eyes behind the 
spectacles are small, and of a slow, searching look. Ames 
came to Congress with the soul of a commercial traveler, and, 
if expelled from it, would feel no particular inconvenience or 
loss of self-esteem. The shovel which his trip-hammer beats 
into shape is scarcely harder, and, as the man grows old, he 
rusts, but is too rugged to decay. A monument to Oakes 
Ames ought to be made of scrap-iron, and John B. Alley would 
be the solitary mourner over it, and, unless watched, he would 
peddle away the monument piece-meal. 

Ames made small bones of telling the most of what he re- 
membered about Congressmen, and, but for Alley, he would 
probably have remembered considerably more. 

Alley sat by his side all the while, lifting or lowering his 
brows suggestively, as Ames helplessly looked around at him 
for counsel. He was thirteen years the junior of Ames, who 
was nearly 70 years of age. 

Alley was a shoemaker in boyhood, and he is now the pro- 
prietor of the best house in Lynn. He is proud of his money, 
and holds to it with the desperation of a cannibal husbanding 
his last corpse. He is a short, demure, white-headed man, and 
has an endless tongue, which testifies all manner of hearsay, 
and covers time with space, to the exclusion of information, 
and to the prejudice of more modest and less doubtful evidence. 

Alley has enormously profited by Ames's contracts, and he 
appears in Ames's letters as the incorrigible opponent to every 
dividend to outsiders. He was the chief adviser to Ames's 
course toward M' Comb, and he is really on the spot at present 
as the principal and counsel of Ames. He may say, with Sir 
Giles Overreach i 



JOHN B. ALLEY. 441 

" In being out of office, I am out of danger ; 

Where, if I were a Justice, besides the trouble, 

I might, or out of wilfulness or error, 

Run myself finely into a premunire, 

And so become a prey to the informer. 

No, I'll have none of it ; 'tis enough I keep 

Greedy at my devotion. So he serve 

My purposes, let him hang, or damn, I care not ! 

Friendship is but a word, I must have all men 

Sellers, and I the only purchaser ! " 

We have no remark to make upon Senator Patterson — who 
is a good sort of commonplace man — described by Senator Nye 
as " a little college professor," except to remark that New- 
Hampshire is the jobbingest State in the Union, and this city 
is overrun with its spawn. They are claim agents, " counsel- 
lors," strikers, land rats, and water rats. 

At the latter part of the week the meek-faced Boyer of the 
town of Norristown, where Hartranft hails from, might have 
been seen moving around the hotels. He and Brooks belonged 
together to the Union Pacific Railroad Committee, and both 
are implicated, Boyer as trustee, and mayhap thereby hangs a 
tale. 

Does the Democratic party wonder why it possesses no con- 
fidence ? Here are a Democratic editor at the metropolis and 
a Pennsylvania Democrat, both Congressmen, tied up in na- 
tional securities, and of course the intimidated creatures of the 
Administration side. During the last campaign, when the 
Greeley journals were pushing the Credit Mobilier scandal, 
Brooks was running around the Fifth Avenue Hotel nightly 
saying " M'Comb's character is bad onthe street! " He kept 
up this senile speech, and alleged that the Credit Mobilier talk 
was not righteous ammunition for the canvass, thereby doing 
his part to cripple the candidates. Greeley is in his grave, 
but Brooks lives. What a commentary is this on the value of 
life! 

A fat man, square everywhere below the head and outside 
of the heart, and named Bushnell, came before the committee 



C42 



CREDIT MOBILIER. 



last week to say that his children's children would honor him 
for building the Pacific railway. The correspondent had no 
difficulty in putting this person down as one of the " stalls " 
for Ames and Alley. 

Unless we are incorrectly posted, this very person gave his 
check for two hundred shares Credit Mobilier ($20,000) on a 
bank where he had no funds, and he palavered the check along, 
saying he would attend to it, arrange it, &c, until he had 
actually collected all the stock, bonds, and cash dividends for 
two years, just as if the check had been paid. The reason was 
that he was necessary to Ames, Alley, and Dillon. Moreover, 
as gossip in the committee-room says, $112,000 worth of Gov- 
ernment certificates and $400,000 worth of first mortgage 
bonds, (partly charged to one Shaw, according to the notable 
book-keeping of the Credit Mobilier,) which were traced into 
Bushnell's hands years ago, are yet unaccounted for by him. 
This man, nevertheless, says that Congressmen ought to have 
moral pluck and admit their Credit Mobilier, and he says that 
$50,000 worth of his stock in the Credit Mobilier was recently 
thrown out of bank on account of the present investigation. 
Which bank ? The same he gave the $20,000 chetek upon ? 

Bushnell struck us as a blower. When we heard him talk 
we wondered whether his monument — they all expect monu- 
ments and " children's children" — had not better be constructed 
on the pneumatic principle, of wind. 

For the half dozen or eight members of Congress who, in a 
moment of weakness or temptation, accepted this Credit Mobi- 
lier stock from Oakes Ames, there would be no severe expres- 
sions from anybody except for their precipitate denials. Mr. 
Schofield merits no sympathy on the ground of meekness ; for 
during the campaign he was stigmatizing this and other charges 
as a " Greeley lie." Mr. Colfax's situation is most pitiable of 
all ; for he denied outright that he had any stock, denounced 
correspondents for merely intimating as much, and yet, by the 
testimony, seems to have done the sinister service for the 



VERDICTS IN THE SEVERAL CASES. 443 

Credit Mobilier of " blocking the game " of an investigation 
and inciting even the pernicious Ames to exclaim : 

" In Colfax's case don't you think the investment paid ?" 

And then that idiotic explanation read before the committee 
by Mr. Colfax ; that assumption of childishness ; that touch of 
the immaculate conception when he still professed not to know 
what the Mobilier was ; that shallow beseeching of somebody 
to cross-examine him ! The man disarms us by his littleness. 
Go, Schuyler Colfax and*let us forget thee ! This stage of pub- 
lic life is too large for such puppetry as thine. 

Mr. Dawes has a robust explanation, which acquits him of 
anything mean except his evasive denial. Mr. Blaine was too 
sagacious to sell out his prospects so cheaply. Of two or three 
other members, Ames took advantage and turned their poverty 
into a public temptation nearly disastrous to their reputations. 
Mr. Kelley is one of these men ; but in view of Ames' testimony 
that he is still the latter's debtor for $1,000, how unnecessary 
was this explanation of Mr. Kelley : 

" I have never' owned a share of stock in the Credit Mobilier 
of America, nor has any member of my family, either directly 
or by the intervention of a trustee or agent." 

Well did Hamlet say that playing on such stops was easy as 
lying. 

In General Garfield's case Mr. Ames seems to have taken 
advantage of a man in distress, and to have secured a loan by 
an entangling investment. As soon as Garfield discovered the 
cheat he returned the money. 

Mr. James Wilson of Iowa, who has been doing a good deal 
of something in this city since he left Congress, and who was 
so touchy as to his honor that he made a great speech once in 
the House, saying that he had never received any imputation 
but one, and who proved' his peace of mind by persecuting 
newspaper writers, this friend of Billy McGarrahan, has been 
the subject of inquiry in this case, and we suggest that lie now 
accept one of those three Cabinet positions which the President 
offered him. He would seem to need some such extension of 
confidence ! 



444 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

Mr. Allison has made himself mysterious by a denial. When 
Peter denies his Credit Mobilier the cock crows thrice for divi- 
dends! 

Henry Wilson has been the victim of a wedding gift. At 
the fine old gentleman's silver wedding, the anniversary of 
honorable domestic years, the Ames gang strode in and put 
Credit Mobilier stock on the plate. To defame a well-spent life 
by such a testimonial proves the brutality of this crowd.. Why 
did they not put their hands in their pockets and subscribe any 
honest currency which they might have possessed ? As it was, 
they might as well have given another man's gold watch to the 
old couple. 

The youthful Painter, who has been hanging on the verge 
of the newspaper profession for ten years or more, affecting to 
know how to spell, and proving that he affects it only to job, 
appears in this case as a striker for Credit Mobilier stock. He 
not only got twenty shares, but, says Ames, " was in a high 
dudgeon that he did not get fifty." He had failed to strike 
Durant for this amount, and appears to have got it out of Ames 
only by proffering his malignant services to defame M'Comb. 

The three persons who appear to constitute the central direct- 
ory of the mortal remains of the Credit Mobilier are Messrs. 
Ames, Alley, and Brooks. Mr. Brooks' speech in Congress 
against M'Comb has reacted upon himself. We leave him to 
deal with the evidence which has developed since his speech, 
and if it be brought home to him that, as a Government 
director, he took interest in the Union Pacific railroad, and as 
a Democrat demanded stock to " take care of the Democratic 
side," he should receive that generosity he meted out to 
M'Comb. On cowardice and cruelty sympathy is thrown 
away ! 

Mr. Alley has labored very hard here to prove himself a par- 
simonious toady and an example of grasping contemptibility. 
To look at him and hear him talk is a surfeit. He has volun- 
tarily put himself beside the principal in this matter, and his 
screed upon M'Comb was that of a vulgar slanderer whose ig- 
norance could not estimate the effect of a coarse action. 



THE CASE OF -BINGHAM. 445 

As to Mr. Bingham, who met the charge with that old-fash- 
ioned shaking of the head and jabber about a licentious press, 
reading meanwhile a piece of blunt acknowledgment, he fell 
over his own ingenuity directly ; for he wished it made a part 
of the record that he had introduced a bill in Congress obligat- 
ing the Company to protect the national interest. A corre- 
spondent promptly forwarded a question as to whether the said 
security for the Government's interest was not appended to 
Bingham's bill in the Senate and returned to the House in the 
form of an amendment ? Mr. B. slunk a perceptible slink and 
confessed the soft impeachment. 

Mr. Bingham then qualified his rhetorical allusion to "a 
licentious press," by saying that he meant by it only the editor, 
who attributed to him $20,000 worth of profits in the Credit 
Mobilier. 

Let us see. 

The dividends in Credit Mobilier were eleven hundred per 
cent, prior to 1870. If Mr. Bingham got but $6,500 he ought 
to bring Oakes Ames to account, for the man Bushnell says 
that any member who had the stock promised to him ought to 
demand it. 

Go, John A. Bingham, and take BushnelPs principals at their 
word. They sold you for a Chinaman and gave you but one- 
third of what you were entitled to. 

We looked at Bingham giving his testimony before that meek 
and courteous chairman, old Judge Poland, and recalled the 
time when Bingham himself, conducting the McGarrahan in- 
vestigation, tyrannized over witnesses in the interest of the 
Micks and O'Shilleys. Poland, mavourneen ! Thou art nothing 
less than a gentleman of the old school. 

In our judgment Messrs. Dawes and Garfield came off vic- 
toriously in this matter. The miserable Ames, who seems to 
have been a public money lender, took advantage of Garfield 
when in need of money to tie him up hi Credit Mobilier. Of 
Mr. Dawes he took advantage when the latter wanted to buy 
some Cedar Rapids stock. 



446 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

Ames richly deserved expulsion, and without it all this investi- 
gation would have been for naught. The following railway jobs he 
conducted successfully through Congress, and some of them 
were accompanied with better endowments than the Union Pa- 
cific : namely, Sioux City, Iowa Falls and Sioux City, Cedar 
Rapids, Union Pacific, and finally that magnificently endowed 
Eastern Division of The Union Pacific. He came to Congress 
to job in railways, and gave all his time to it. 

Mr. Glenni W. Scofield's statement has a measley and hardly 
convalescent look. When a man says he " does not remember 
receiving any dividends " and does not remember what his atti- 
tude was on legislation affecting the Union Pacific railroad, we 
regard him in the words of the same poet we have quoted, as 
follows : 

" With sadness that is calm, not gloom, 
We learn to think upon him ; 
With meekness that is gratefulness » 

On Oakes Ames who hath won him. 
Who suffered once those dividends 
To public shame to blind him, 
* But gently led the blind along 

Where Jerry Black could find him." 

The ugly fact has come out, that Jacob Harlan received 
$10,000 from Thomas C. Durant, that chief of sinners and 
gallants, to elect himself Senator from Iowa. And mark ! 
Harlan had been the Secretary of the Interior during the time 
that the Union Pacific wanted work done in that department. 
If we are to believe the gossip on the street, Mr. Harlan got 
from this interest not merely $10,000, but $30,000. 

But where is the Rev. Dr. Newman, who wrote the circular 
letter and had it lithographed with the caption : "Dear Sir and 
Brother," and asked the suffrages and lobby devotion of all 
the Methodist preachers in Iowa for Harlan ? Did he get none 
of the Credit Mobilier, or was his portion passed through his 
countenance and melted to brass to swell the cadence of the 
chimes ? If we were a Senator we would hoist the reverend 
lobbyists, at any rate, out of our wing. 



THE CASE OF JAMES BROOKS. 447 

James Brooks would have received plenty of sympathy had 
he respected another man's character. When a man plays it 
fine he must have some of the naivete of an artist to give 
dignity to his misses. Mr. Brooks has changed his flag-ship 
•two or three times during the action. Once we heard him 
appeal to the Deity in a rather blasphemous way to say that 
he had never had a share's worth of interest in the Credit 
Mobilier or Union Pacific. 

On the whole we sum him up to be a parvenu, who has 
made most of his money in this sort of way, and has dissipated 
his nerve. His political positions have generally been those 
of a pompous dough-face, extenuating the rebellion, while 
filching from the Union. He subscribed $10,000 to the Union 
Pacific Railroad, and has drawn $300,000 from it, including 
his commission as the salesman of the Pacific Railroad 
telegraph line. He is reputed to exist now as a director in 
the Union Pacific by the use of the shares he received as 
dividends on Credit Mobilier. He opposed the Union Pacific 
road until he was " let in," when he became its oilman, and 
greased the Democratic side, or professed to do so. 

It was an awful picture to see this sickly man examining 
Tom Durant as to the high patriotic necessity of the Union 
Pacific Railroad, while feebly requesting old Judge Poland to 
lug in Jeems, Lazarus, and Fagin to prove M'Comb not a 
credible witness. Death and reputation seemed at work in 
our friend, and Durant so sympathized with him that he said : 

" By Jupiter ! I must let up on that man. I don't want any 
male corpses laid at my door-post untimely." 

Durant did let up, covered Brooks' tracks as. much as he 
dared, and proved himself the magnanimous materialistic 
Bohemian that he is. 

No two confessions were alike. Henry Wilson sentimental- 
ized his error over by expressing his notion of the vileness of 
imputations. He called his Maker and himself face to face in 
his closet, and attempted to butter Oakes Ames over with 
humble praise. 



448 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

Henry Wilson, beware of the fate -of Schuyler Colfax ! 
Hypocrisy in the Vice-President is a garment of gauze. The 
oft iteration of. poverty as an excuse for simony becomes at 
last disgusting. This country calls on no man to be an ass 
in order to serve it with spirit ; and to perceive and apprehend 
a case of bribery bottomed on public robbery is the duty of a 
Senator. 

When a man has been ten or fifteen years in continuous 
public life, and still affects not to know what the Credit 
Mobilier is, we set him down as a fraud. If he does not know, 
away with him for stupidity ; and if he does not know any 
more, while mysteriously receiving the dividends, we classify 
him with Cowper, of whom the poet said : 

" That while in darkness he remained, 

Unconscious of the guiding, 
All things provided came without 

The sweet sense of providing." 

Poverty is not a plea in rebuttal of a direct charge of pecula- 
tion, for it may be the concomitant of profligacy. To talk 
about the deceased members of one's family in a whining way, 
and offer to sell out one's goods for thirty-five hundred dollars, 
seem to us to be overrating the credulities of men. Mr. Wilson 
bought that Credit Mobilier stock in January, 1868, and parted 
with it at the close of the same year. Now, between these 
dates above, four hundred per cent, dividends were declared. 

Mr. Wilson says that if ten thousand dollars were due him, 
he would not touch a cent, of it. Where does this leave 
Messrs. Bingham and Hooper ? Ah ! Messieurs in Congress, 
"thus conscience doth make cowards of us all." 

We heard Wm. D. Kelley's long-winded harangue, delivered 
with all the resonance of an unending tune in a negro meeting- 
house, with compassion not wholly unmixed with wonder. 

A person who pretends to be the great statesman of the 
period, and to know whys and wherefores, from the Sutro 
tunnel up to sublimated potash, and to be still so stupid that 
he did not know the difference between a loan and a purchase, 



MR. KELLY'S " MEMORY." 449 

is a candidate for the asylum. Where is the shame of these 
people, to sit in the presence of such satirists upon human 
nature as Ames and Alley, and tell these forgetful reminis- 
cences ? Mr. Kelley makes a great point that two thousand 
dollars could not buy him. We do not know about that ! The 
picture he drew to the point of satiety about his renewals, 
protests, mortgages, etc., did not x-educe the timeliness of any 
two thousand dollars. He certainly made himself appear 
a sufficiently impecunious victim of Oakes Ames. Said Mr. 
Kelley : " For largely more than a quarter of a century I have 
advocated the Pacific Railway." 

Let us see. 

We acquired California in 1847, twenty-five years ago. Did 
Mr. Kelley start the project of a Pacific road before we had 
any population or right on that coast ? These touches of 
rhetorical egotism are entirely unmeaning. Mr. Kelley is 
neither a saint or a hero, and we prefer to let him slip with 
the apology that " Oakes Ames did tempt me and I did eat." 

While Congressmen wriggle and writhe and say that it was 
noble-minded to own Credit Mobilier stock, read the letters of 
Oakes Ames ! He expresses his opinion of these men, and 
shows why he wanted them in the contracting company. With 
the stock in their pockets they were his. And here is a sin- 
gular passage in one of his letters : 

" Iii view of Washburne's move to investigate us I go for 
one bond dividend in full. I understand that the opposition 
to it comes from John B. Alley." 

Now, why did Alley object ? Because he had parted with 
his stock ! 

He had sold 250 shares Credit Mobilier at $200 per share to 
Peter Butler of Boston, December 5, 1867. He had expected 
to pick up more stock for less money, but he found in New 
York that nobody would sell. He therefore availed himself of 
his position as trustee to resist a dividend. Durant, knowing 
Alley's rapacious motive, proposed to buy him up, which he 
did, as the following receipt will show. Alley thus got 250 
29 



450 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

shares of stock, and of course he changed tactics and received 
a dividend : 

(Copy.) 

T. C. Dnrant having sold to me a call to take from him within ten days 
from this date two hundred and fifty shares of stock of the Credit Mobilier 
of America, in case I do not avail myself of that privilege I promise to 
return to said Durant the memorandum conveying said privilege on his 
return to me of this paper. 

(Signed), John B. Alley. 

New York, December 12, 186 7. 

THE MANNER OF RENDERING TESTIMONY. 

Our opinion of the committee conducting this investigation 
is enhanced by its behavior during tjie last week. Incisive 
questions were proposed by McCrary and Niblack. Judge 
Poland, whose error is slowness, and who examined these 
speculators as if they were of the blood royal, also addressed 
some pertinent inquiries to the witnesses. The question asked 
by McCrary of Kelley as to the tone of the letters of Oakes 
Ames, was of the sort which should have been put among 
these proceedings more frequently. Mr. Merrick has preserved 
watchful and discriminating behavior during all this investi- 
gation, which probably accounted for Bingham's blustering 
way of reading his evidence to Merrick, as if the latter had 
intentions on him. ' ♦ 

There have been too many statements made in these pro- 
ceedings — written statements, not in the form of legitimate 
testimony, and artfully contrived to evade admissions. On 
some of these there has been no cross-examination whatever. 
Colonel M'Comb stood up and answered orally, ,and took no 
advantage of the lax rules of evidence accorded here. A 
flagrant case of libel, in the form of testimony, not wholly 
unlike forswearing — to call it by no graver name — was that of 
John B. Alley. His evidence was prepared by B. C. McMurtrie 
of Philadelphia, a lawyer always resident in the Quaker City. 
Mr. Alley said that he had' prepared his testimony, and sub- 
mitted it to a distinguished New England jurist, who had told 



J. b. alley's perjury. 451 

him that ' to omit a word or a line of it would be to his 
prejudice. 

" Who is that New England jurist ? " was asked by Judge 
Merrick. 

After a pause Alley replied : 

" Mr. McMurtrie." 

As Alley was under oath when he said that his adviser was 
a distinguished New England jurist, and as he named McMur- 
trie, never a New Englander, where is Alley's veracity ? And 
four-fifths of the said testimony was mere slander, such as 
such a creature could pour out on M'Comb. 

p. s. — Saturday's testimony. 

" Very eloquently said, Mr. Wilson ! " remarked Judge 
Niblack satirically, after James Wilson had quoted several 
thousand words laudatory of the Union Pacific road, and its 
construction " amidst bands of hostile Indians." 

Everybody who has passed over the Union Pacific road 
knows that no Indians are to be seen, and that the construction 
is over gently rising slopes and acclivities nearly as adaptable 
to track-laying as the level prairies. The only startling thing 
about the road is its crookedness, after reaching the three hun- 
dreth mile, where Durant ceased building and Ames began. 
The new crowd, commencing their career with consistent rapa- 
city, made the road serpentine, and often bent it back on itself 
at level and fertile places to get more land and more 
bonds. 

Wilson's testimony, as we understood it, made him claim a 
great deal of credit for saving the Government half the charge 
of mail transportation over the Union Pacific railroad, whereas 
the original bill saved the Government the whole charge. * 

Mr. Wilson said that he had made $3,000 on his stock, the 
full salary of a member of Congress for about eight months, or 
all the working time of Congress for a whole year. Pie did not 
remember any dividends, and the . manner of the sale looked 
very awkward. Mr. Wilson is now in this city, seeking to 



452 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

locate railroad lands about one hundred miles off the line of 
the Burlington and Missouri railroad. Judge Poland perti- 
nently asked whether Wilson sold his stock to qualify himself 
to be a Government director of the Union Pacific Railroad, 
which he is at present. This evidence was full of solicitude 
for the Government twenty years hence. The quantity of 
singe about this cat amounts to a sheepskin. 

Boyer, the young chap from Norristown, was in Congress 
just four years, between 1865-69, and got 100 shares of Credit 
Mobilier (25 being for Mrs. Boyer). He was on the Pacific 
Railroad committee with Brooks, and at 1100 per cent, increase, 
his profits were $110,000. The New York Nation says the 
profits were 1500 per cent., making, if true, $150,000 profit. 
Pretty good for the young fellow by the name of Boyer ! The 
"Norristowners will have a little family legend on this sudden 
wealth for many generations. This was mere plunder from 
the Treasury and the public lands of the United States. Yet 
" he had the right to do it." 

Mr. Colfax came with counsel, and again and again sought 
to break the rampart of the old man's confession. . 

" You've got the stock, and you know it," said Ames, " So 
what's the use of getting around it ?" 

" How could I own it and not be aware of it ?" said Colfax, 
" Why didn't people tell me ?" 

" Why," said Ames, " nobody ever told me I owned my 
own hat !" 

The fact was that the Vice-President had taken a quantity 
of the Mobilier Stock, drawn the dividend, and put them in 
bank, so that the bank-book, the cheques paid by the Sergeant- 
at-Arms, and the testimony of Oakes Ames made a complete, 
serried, and simultaneous narrative. It was irrefutable. It 
broke down the dignity of his office. It was crushing. 

To a young man concealed on a committee-room sofa, enter 
Oakes and John B. Alley, diligently toadied by two newspaper- 
reporters. 

Ames grunts, and fills a whole leather sofa. Alley takes a 



INTERESTING SKETCHES. 453 

chair, grunts, and stows away his coat-tails, to save them from 
wear and tear. 

Alley : " Oh, dear ! Ames, I knew that great heart of yours 
would get you into trouble. I knew that great heart of yours 
would be our ruin. I told you that your generosity was too 
abundant, and your impulses too noble. Didn't I tell you so ? 
I want these gentlemen to hear it said." 

Ames : " Oh, Alley ! I can't remember everything you 
remind me of. I believe you did say something of that descrip- 
tion." 

Alley : " You hear him admit it, gentlemen. Ah ! Mr. 
Ames has a foolish, noble heart. He wants to be doing good, 
even when it is dangerous to do so. That scoundrel M'Comb 
now gloats in his distress. Mr. Ames is a persecuted hero, 
and, as I have often said before, deserves a monument as high 
as the shaft on Bunker Hill." 

Here enters an old whining Virginia Railroad man. 

Old Whiney : " Meister Ames, I called to see if you wasn't 
going to help me out with your subscription to the Catoctin & 
Occoquan Railroad." 

Ames (very gruff) : " No. Pretty time to ask me for a 
subscription. Go to M'Comb. He's got plenty of money. 
He is ruining me. I believe he's a friend of yours ?" 

Old Whiney : " No, Mr. Ames, I don't think highly of Mr. 
M'Comb. He refused to help me with my enterprise." 

Ames : " What's that ? M' Comb's a d — d scoundrel, is he ? 
Alley, remember that !" 

Alley : " Yes, Mr. Ames, I believed, by looking at Whiney's 
intelligent head, that such must be his opinion. He says that 
M'Comb is a scoundrel, gentlemen " (to the reporters). 

Ames : " Whiney, come around and See me to-night. May- 
be I can let you have ten thousand or so in your enterprise. 
But remember to remark to your friends that, in your opinion, 
M'Comb is a scoundrel." 

We need not prolong • these little sketches. After a very 
long examination, conducted with all frankness by both the 



454 CREDIT MOBILIER. 

Poland Committee and the Wilson Committee, the former 
reported Brooks and Ames for expulsion, but made no recom- 
mendation in the cases of the other members, whose state- 
ments ■ they declared to be painfully contradictory. A great 
debate ensued, lasting more than two days, and heard by 
enormous audiences in the galleries and on the floors. The 
corrupt interest triumphed, and Brooks and Ames were merely 
censured. An attempt was made to censure also Messrs. 
Hooper of Massachusetts, Kelley of Pennsylvania, Garfield of 
Ohio, Bingham of Ohio, Dawes, Butler, and others. However, 
Congress, satisfied that the people lacked the interest and 
indignation to make it any penalty, not only laid the whole 
matter on the table, but, as if to show that corruption was the 
organic law of the land and of the American Congressman, 
immediately turned about and increased the pay of a member 
nearly one-third, and made the provisions of the act apply to 
the Congress just expiring. This most scandalous action was 
worthy of a body of men which has become diseased and cor- 
rupt by the advantages of war, and has wholly lost its own self- 
respect and the confidence of the country. 



CHAPTEE XXIX. 



THE WORST 0P WASHINGTON LIFE. 

Talking with an old and veteran observer in lobby matters 
yesterday he described to me some of the celebrated females 
who have operated here during the last twenty years. 

One of these goes by the name of " Comanche," after a cel- 
ebrated iron-clad which was built on the Pacific coast during 
the war. A claim for relief was brought, of course, and the 
amount demanded was not far from $200,000. All the appli- 
ances of the lobby were duly brought to bear ; the conductor of 
the enterprise was a fine broth of an Irishman, and he agreed to 
pay the woman called " Comanche" a fair compensation to be 
based upon her influence. " Comanche " at once took rooms at 
the National Hotel, and, having conquered everything at that end 
of the city, came on to Willard's. She was large, voluptuous, 
and made herself particularly pleasing to the head of the 
Ways and Means, and the head of the Military Committees. 
It was not very plain that she possessed other than bodily 
endowments, and the presumption has not been contradicted 
that she had only one manner of accommodation which was 
pretty sure to make an obligation. After spending a full year 
at this apprenticeship, " Comanche" presented a bill to the 
master of ceremonies for $ 20,000, one-half to be paid to a 
gentleman in the lobby, for whom she had a fondness. The claim 
was paid in full to the shipbuilders, but poor " Comanche" got 
only $4,000, which' merely paid her hotel bill, so that sub- 
sistence and no more was the reward of all this accommoda- 
tion. " Comanche" raged and threatened, but the ship people 

(455) 



456 THE WORST OF WASHINGTON LIFE. 

merely said : " What are you gding to do about it ? "We have 
got the money, and you may write an account, if you want to, 
of the sort of work you did for us, but that would be to destroy 
your own character as a witness." 

" Comanche" is still alive, and a frequent visitor to Wash- 
ington, but she has grown large and portly, and is pretty well 
forgotten in the lobby. 

Another well remembered attempt to introduce female charms 
as an active influence in the National Legislature, was that of 
Colt, the fire-arms manufacturer, who wished to have his patents 
extended. Being a large, gross man, he thought that the 
coarsest expedients would be the most effective, and taking a 
house on C street, a few blocks from the Capitol, he maintained 
from time to time such prepossessing company, that the scan- 
dal was instantaneous and did much to defeat the relief re- 
quired. 

A celebrated lobby character around Washington in 1871-2 
may be called Mrs. General Straitor. She is said to have been 
a handsome castaway in one of the Southern towns, who in- 
fatuated General Straitor when the Union army occupied the 
place. He was a drinking man whose remainder of days were 
not increased by this mesalliance. His widow, however, got the 
'benefit of her marriage certificate, and his well-known name, 
and his army companions brought her on to Washington where 
she was put forward to influence the Interior Department in 
the matter of Indian contracts. The celebrated Perry Fuller, 
and one of the Western Senators, paid Mrs. General Straitor's 
household bills, and provided her with a sideboard. She 
retired from the Capital City possessor of her own establish- 
ment in New York, and it is said that she is the prote'ge* of a 
retired politician. Mrs. Straitor was a darlt eyed lady, with a 
bright complexion, very elegant in figure and dress. 

No woman of her period was more notable in Washington, 
than Mrs. Lucy Cobb. She was remarkably handsome, and 
inclined to voluptuousness. Her eyes were dark, and her 
form just over the limits of delicacy. She was uneducated, 



FEMALE LOBBYISTS — LUCY COBB. 457 

and ot rather low origin, and began her public career by keep- 
ing a cigar shop on the avenue. In some manner she became 
a favorite at the White House amongst the Secretaries and 
doorkeepers, and, it is said, of the President himself. At this 
time, the procuring ol pardons for officials in the late rebel- 
lion was quite an avocation, and the rumor gained ground that 
Mrs. Cobb could get a pardon where anybody else would fail. 
She probably picked up a few hundred dollars in this precari- 
ous way, and more by less professional methods. Policemen, 
folders, pages, and Congressmen all knew her, and she would 
walk through the Capitol imannoyed by the stare of people, and 
was able to make her way into .almost any ol the committee 
rooms. Her late career has been comparatively indigent and 
unnoticed. 

Among my acquaintances is a young practising doctor of this 
city, and with him I frequently make the round of his patients. 
Last Summer, during the recess, he stopped for me one after- 
noon, and we drove over toward " the Island," the flat, swampy, 
unsocial part ol the town. 

" I have a bad case," he said " ~wn here in Murder Bay, 
(' Murder Bay' is the gulfy street of the street-walker) and I 
must stop a minute on the way there at the Department." 

At the Department the doctor sent his name up for a cer- 
tain clerk. The clerk came down — a shabby, sickly being, 
with a limp walk, an attenuated form, a haggard face. 

" How*s Eliza ? " said the doctor. 

" No better ! " 

" Did you buy the medicines according to my prescriptions ? " 

"No!" 

" Why not ? I told you they were oi vital importance. 
The girl will die ! " 

The sickly clerk threw up his head, as if it pained him to 
carry the distresses in it. 

" My God ! " he said, " I can do no more. My salary is 
anticipated for eight months. I paid sixty dollars for a hun- 
dred the last time. I have exhausted the last friend, and 



458 THE WORST OF WASHINGTON LIFE. 

pawned my last and least possessions, my shirts, my boots. 
My very comb and brush I pledged last week for twenty-five 
cents. The girl will die any way. So will I ! Doctor, my 
God ! what can I do ? " 

The doctor drove away to a drug store and paid for the drugs 
himself, saying, " this is another privilege of a physician !" 
Then we drove to Murder Bay and the doctor said to me : 

" Come up here. Everybody knows the doctor's gig and 
will take you for a physician." 

We passed into a house of lost women. It was bright day. 
A few negligent, half-dressed females were lounging in the par- 
lors with a " lover" or two,' the privileged pensioners of the 
day. The mistress of the place, cold-faced as a fish, showed 
us up into a dismantled room, where on a bed, unmade appar- 
ently for weeks, in the odors of liquor, smoke, and dyspeptic 
exhalations, a young girl lay. 

The doctor threw up the sash and let in the sky and the 
wind. The girl turned over and said through her baked lips : 

" Have you seen Jim ?" 

" Yes ! he has sent these medicines." 

" Where did he get money ? He has pawned his comb and 
brush, and my wedding ring, that was to have been, went be- 
fore them, kept to the last by a crazy superstition. I heard 
him threaten to steal, for he's got chances, and they say every- 
body steals in the government." 

" Jim didn't steal anything," said the doctor. " I bought 
the medicines." 

" I won't take them," said the girl. " They will make me 
well. I shall get drunk again and come back on yo-u for more 
medicines. A little of this money would get me a dose that 
would cure me for good. Oh ! Doctor," cried the girl, " do 
buy me that medicine. I have prayed with Miss Betty (the 
housekeeper), I have offered the black woman all my hair, 
every lock of it, to get me a little." 

Her voice softened and became indistinct. I know that the 
word was — " poison." 



A DREADFUL ROMANCE. 459 

The doctor and the girl remonstrated with each other in sup- 
pressed tones. I could see the pleading, imploring eye of the 
girl, her hand upon the doctor's coat, wrestling with him 
for the gift of death. Merciful death ! How holy it would 
make this shamble! The girl was of. a good, 'round buxom 
figure, country-like in accent and expression, very young, 
not above sixteen, she afterward said. Her hair long, 
and combed from time to time with her fingers, was of a 
golden-flax color. The sin of despair and not the sin of folly 
was expressed in her eyes. Her oaths were crude and awk- 
ward, as if just learned. _ It was deep degradation all taken at 
a plunge. The doctor after awhile turned to me and said in 
his professional way, partly business, partly sweetness, as I 
had sometimes seen him mix honey and aloes, pill making.: 

" This is a hard case. I never had but one other like it. 
This girl was engaged to be married to the young fellow we 

saw at the Department. He was too poor to be married, 

but he sent her money to come and visit him. In a freak she 
came on ; both of them got out of funds here. She overstayed 
the period of her visit ; became the subject of scandal at home, 
in Ohio, received the denunciation of her parents, and her 
lover seduced her finally, under promise of marriage when he 
got a little ahead. I have no doubt he meant to marry her, 
but then he never got ahead, rather retrograded, got behind 
more and more, had . his salary hypothecated, and fell in debt 
so deep he couldn't feel bottom. They were turned out of their 
boarding-house, floundered about awhile, and became so poor 
they could not " move." Quarrels ensued and hot words. 
Eliza here pitched into Jim for betraying her. He accused 
her of running' him into debt and being the author of his mis- 
ery. She fell upon the town. He raved, but couldn't help 
himself. Rum came in as a natural colleague. And this is 
one picture of " Life in the Departments." The next will be 
" Jim in jail or hanging himself." 

" No !." said the girl, " there'll be another picture before 
that. Oh ! Can't a good soul in pity give me a bottle of lauda- 
num. I'm of no use to nobody. I am a misery to myself. 



460 THE WORST OP WASHINGTON LIFE. 

Anybody will give me liquor. Nobody will give rue what I 
want — to die this night !" 

Blasphemy came in to curse despair. ■ The delirium followed. 
I went away with the sound of cursing and love making in my 
ear, the gig still standing at the door. 

When I saw the doctor again, after some time ; for I had 
quitted the city during the hot months, I asked him the fate of 
the girl. 

" Died drinking rum !" 

" Where's her man ?" 

" Turned out of the departmen ! Loitering along the sunny 
side of the Avenue, a wretch, a relic !" 

In Washington there are several men and partnerships which 
make the business of lending money to clerks to anticipate 
their salaries, — shaving the same from thirty to fifty per cent. 
It is said that these work in collusion with the Department 
paymasters. 

Gambling as practised in the old days has ceased at the 
Capital ; poker has succeeded it. 

Poker is the extreme development of the American specula- 
tive character. Poker is the American arena. In former 
days they constructed coliseums for vast combats upon which 
a nation could look down. In modern times, coming to the 
democratic spirit, the game of poker has been invented. That 
is the American Coliseum. All the struggles between Tiberius 
Caesar and the gladiators are reproduced when a man like Hon. 
S. sits down to try a game of chance, five cards dealt all 
around, with a table of five. The pack of cards costs forty 
cents. The Coliseum in our time would cost twenty-five mil- 
lions. Such is the pure democratic institution." 

Said my informant : " Poker is the best test of magnificent 
character. I have played poker for fifteen years, and I sup-, 
pose that between the hospitality which the game involves, and 
the direct losses which stand upon the die of the cards, I have 
lost fifty thousand dollars. No money which I ever spent 
gives me less concern than that fifty thousand. There area 



THE NATIONAL GAME — POKER. 463 

number of first-class men here — bold, brave, cool-headed — who 
love poker as a pursuit. Bob S., recently appointed to the 
most important office in the gift of the President, is perhaps 
the first poker player in the national councils. S.'s power as 
a poker player lies in his imperturbable look, his love of the 
game, his boldness to hang on and fight out the chances not 
only until midnight, but until the morning dawn, his thoroughly 
regardless way of counting his losses, and his endurance — the 
game absorbing every sense until it is finished. On the whole, 
S. is both the most eminent and the most successful poker 
player of national reputation in America. 

In Washington there are few or no gambling houses, but 
poker is the social statesman's resort. It was different in 
other days. Old times at Washington showed horse-racing and 
dueling ; later came in common professional gambling on L 
street and on Sixth. After tolerating these nuisances for many 
years, on Wednesday, October 26, 1870, Joseph S. Hall's 
saloon was closed up by Marshal Sharp after a seventeen years 
course. This was the last notable faro bank in Washington.* 

The telegraph has advised you of the murder of McCarty b\ 
a rival gambler named Darclen, near Willard's Hotel, Wash- 
ington. These characters belong to the political period, inas- 
much as they have moved beneath the surface of Washington 
society since the time of the war, and have frequently appeared 
above it. 

Darden is a type of the Southern sporting man, heavy, se- 
cretive, without social pretension, and in the way of nobody 
except those who wish to try fortune with Mm ; but, like his 
kind at the South, he goes armed and is more ready to kill than 
to quarrel. He has long fluctuated between Richmond, Wash- 
ington, and Baltimore, keeping the society of sporting capital- 

* Henry A. "Wise gives in the life of S. S. Prentiss a scene at a public dinnet 
in 1838 where Webster made an inebriate speech on the Union, many weeping 
in a maudlin way, until a Kentucky member " in a perfect frenzy seized an empty 
champagne bottle and crying out : " Reform or Revolution ! Liberty or Death !" 
threw it at Webster's head. A faro bank scene in this book illustrates the morals 
of the time as well. 



460 



THE WORST OP WASHINGTON LIFE. 



MiS, and generally running a game or a table at one or more 
of these places. His den in Washington was a few doors from 
Willard's Hotel, and during the day he might be seen at his 
door or in the liquor saloons of the vicinity, a florid, quiet, 
watchful man, of burly size, and with the appearance in his 
heavy blue eyes of one who kept late hours and drunk deeply. 
Nature and habit have stamped upon his face and figure the 
Southern gamester's "guise; he is more than 40 years of age, 
dresses plainly, and his craft is to him a profession — a bad pro- 
fession, but with its regime of " honor," and to be maintained 
inside of its condition by " square" conduct. 

Jack McCarty, whom Darden killed, was not up to the gam- 
bler's mark of manhood, a plausible New Yorker, — young, 
handsome, and affable, — with the nature of a thief and the 
address of a gentleman. He wore better clothes than any man 
in Washington ; generally a superfine white overcoat with a 
black velvet collar, a large and valuable ring, diamond studs, 
and boots and linen of irreproachable neatness. Kid gloves, 
and a hat perpetually new, added to this outcast's splendor ; 
his raven hair and moustache called attention from his pale, 
cowardly eye and white-livered skin. He subsisted upon the 
proceeds of the shame of fallen women, with whom he lived 
continually, not as one infatuated, but as one despotic and ava- 
ricious. About one square from Darden's gambling house, 
McCarty kept a brothel, a pair of rickety brick houses, sepa- 
rated by an alley and a gate. It was ostensibly the habitation 
of McCarty's woman-creature, a person to whom he had once 
taken a fancy and given this establishment, watching over its 
management himself meantime, and spending all his nights 
there, while by day, in elegant attire and profuse with money, 
he loitered around the Capitol, the Departments, and the hotels, 
seeking the company of unsuspecting gentlemen whom he 
eventually decoyed either to this den or to some gaming-table 
over which he had control. This despicable life, set off with 
the carriage, the amiable audacity, the dress, and the liberality 
of a seeming gentleman, was, for a time, so successful that 



JACK m'carty. 463 

Jack McCarty could keep the company of Representatives and 
Senators. During the impeachment trial hundreds of visitors 
to Washington conversed, walked, and drank with this pre- 
sumptuous man, whom they do not now confound with the 
unfriended corpse descended to its gutter with a gambler's bul- 
let in it. 

He began in New York, and venturing once to give some 
impudence to a lottery banker, — -the imperious M. C. S., — was 
driven bodily out of New York city by bruisers in Stanley's 

employ. At Washington he put up at W Hotel, and fell 

into the company of guests promiscuously. Too handsome to 
escape curiosity, he was at last ordered out of the house, but 
the acquaintanceship he had formed, and his usefulness as a 
guide and protector in low resorts, kept him above the surface 
until his decease. . 

Six months ago some of the gamblers of the city, and sonn 
indignant people into whose company McCarty had insinuated 
himself, had the man arrested for maintaining a house of ill- 
fame. The sickening details of his daily life were remorselessly 
revealed ; how he abused the female inmates of his den, be- 
cause they were not more industrious at their calling ; and 
how he kept men of family prisoners there, refusing them liq- 
uor to alleviate the relapse from drunkenness, until they signed 
away check after check, and at last were kicked out beggars. 
All this, be it remembered, at the central spot of the American 
Capital, and more or less interwoven with affairs of public bus- 
iness ! 

McCarty, it is said, blackmailed his former respectable 
acquaintances to give bond and pay expenses for him in this 
extremity, and, although found guilty and remanded for sen- 
tence, he in some manner escaped and took to the street, full 
of resentment against Darden and the gamblers of Washington. 

One night, within a stone's throw of the dens of both, these 
dark merchants in the passions and frailties of human kind 
closed their careers. In hate and violence they rushed fu- 
riously together, and the more agile and incensed McCarty 



464 THE WORST OF WASHINGTON LIFE. 

practised the " science" in which he had taken lessons at many 
a prize fight, upon the head of his older adversary. Speedily 
the pistol of the Southerner equalized conditions. The one 
man, with a face gashed and streaming blood, stood a grad- 
uated murderer above the tumbled carcass of his enemy, whose 
miserable soul had not far to descend, so deep in hell had been 
his birth and his youth. In the rich attire which had always 
distinguished him, the agony and the death embracing in his 
handsome face, Jack McCarty went out of infamy by the ap- 
propriate door, too base to point a moral or adorn a tale. 

We may thank God that some of the old social conditions 
are gone which made vice take credit to itself. The country 
contiguous to Washington used to be inhabited by fox hunters 
and idlers of good family who often used the old churches for 
their places of rendezvous. 

The vengeance of democracy, which has finally been satiated 
upon the broad estates and great manor houses of the planters, 
was long anticipated by time upon the established church, and 
the fate of many of them in Virginia reads like a tale of feu- 
dal blasphemy. Of one of these churches, once full of the 
fashion and vanity of the Easter weeks, the tale 'was written 
as long ago as 1838, by Bishop Meade, that it was said by the 
neighbors not to have been used for the last thirty or forty 
years. Thus deserted as a house of God, it became a prey to 
any and every spoiler. An extensive brick wall, which sur- 
rounded the church and guarded the graves of the clead, was 
torn down and used for hearths, chimneys, and other purposes, 
all the country round. The interior of the house soon sank 
into decay, and was carried piecemeal away. For many years 
it was the common receptacle of every beast of the fieid and 
fowl of the air. It was used as a granary, stable, a resort for 
hogs, and everything that chose to shelter there. " Would 
that I could stop here ! " says the chronicler, " but I am too 
credibly informed that for years it was also used as a distillery 
of poisonous liquors ; and that on the very spot where now 
the sacred pulpit stands, that vessel was placed^in which the 



A NEGEO "LEADER." 465 

precious fruits of Heaven were concocted and evaporated into 
a fell poison equally fatal to the souls and bodies of men ; 
while the marble font was circulated from house to house, on 
every occasion of mirth and folly, — being used to prepare ma- 
terials for feasting and drunkenness — until at length it was 
found bruised, battered, and deeply sunk in the cellar of some 
deserted tavern." 

Washington used to develop in the slavery days a strangely 
faithful, ceremonious, and peculative kind of Statesman's ser- 
vant. 

I saw a venerable negro in his full harness one day in 1868 
at the house of an official. He had waited upon no end of 
great people from the era of Monroe down. He knew me as a 
visitor merely, at the house of his " boss." The boss went 
out, temporarily. 

" Gath," he said, " get into a talk with Cassius. He's 
clever as you make 'em. Take him on the sober side ! " 

"Come in ! Cassius. Cassius, I would like to have a little 
private talk with you. Do you know my business ? " 

" Yas, sir ! you write for the papers and things ! " 

" That's what's the matter ! It is in your power, Cassius, to 
be of great service to your race and mine. You can do this 
by telling me the truth. I know that you are a shrewd man ; 
you have saved some money ; you have political frames of mind. 
All your life is not a monkey-life, as most people believe. The 
problem of the black race which troubles us, even now that 
you are free, will trouble you and us much longer, unless we 
understand each other. You are a salaried liar, Cassius ! You 
dodge and skulk for your master, swear he is not home, keep 
away ' bores,' ' bag' cigars at his parties. I have watched you. 
You are a Washington servant, no worse than many other 
grades of white politicians. It is a low life, Cassius ! " 

" Mr. Gath," said Cassius, " you're severe ! " 

" Am I right ? " 

" You ben lookin' at me, sah ! " 

" Now, come ! what are you colored people up to ? " 

" Mr. Gath," said Cassius, " de laws of human nature are 
30 



466 THE WOKST OF WASHINGTON LIFE. 

juss de same ! Skins may differ, as de poet says, but affection 
or human nature never waries. For de lass twenty years de 
culled people of de Destreek have had ringleaders — intelligent 
men, who keep 'em adwised. I was one of 'em. We chief- 
tains could read, and we did read. We consulted. We found 
foce (force) was out ob de question. We so adwised our 
people. But we saw that de Norf and Souf must go to war 
some day, and it was plain dat in some way we could get 
mixed up in de war. As to end ob dat war our hearts was 
troubled. We thought de Southern man would win. He was 
de fighting jackall. 

" It proved contrariwise. But it was so ordered dat de 
black man's help was necessary. Dat necessity, sar, saved us, 
brought us out, and we air now on our pins. 

" Mr. Gath, dere are mo' culled people going to school now 
in de Destreek dan whites. In no cullud quarter nor family is 
dere objection to schools. All is enthusiasm ; de same cannot 
be said of Berks county, Pennsylwaney, and some oder white 
destreeks. Dere never was a people dat hungered and fursted 
for education like de American citizens of African descent. 

" Mr. Gath, we're savin' money. De money-puss controls. 
Dere are some tolabul rich men in de Destreeck. 

" Sar, we know what is impossible. As to socially pushin' 
among white folks, it is not congenial to either color. As to 
marryin' into 'em, where is de use ? A good mahogany face 
is to my mine de color ob de gole-paved streets. We can't 
prevent licentiousness altogether. Neither can you. Nature 
draws de dividin' line between de colors. Sometimes a nasty 
imagination will cross it from boff sides. 

" Lassly, sar, it wouldn't improve your idee ob my sagacity 
to say dat I took cigars and brandy from my boss. Consider, 
sar, dat I don't do it. But, if you want to pursue dese ques- 
tions in social science furder, come to my house of a Sunday, 
and I will give you a cigar quite as good as de boss's, and 
perhaps, by accident, de identical brand ! De Lord dat 
created men wid inalienable rights, give 'em, also inalienable 
perquisites." 



NATIONAL HOTEL DISEASE. 467 

Another vice of the old by-gone days in Washington was 
dirt. This was, probably, the cause of the celebrated National 
Hotel disease in Washington in the year 1856, whereby 
President Buchanan and many public men were made seriously 
ill, and several lingering diseases and deaths ensued. 

Returning from the city to Capitol Hill one night, I encount- 
ered a celebrated hotel clerk, by name Unsworth, who gave, 
me some news apropos of this disease : ' 

" Benson's dead ! " 

This Benson was the proprietor of the National Hotel, and 
he was a man from Delaware, hailing from the state capital 
of Dover, who migrated to Philadelphia, to Atlantic City, and, 
finally to Washington, keeping, generally, large caravanseries, 
so that his death affected, paragraphically, many thousand 
people who had execrated his coffee, praised his Indian slap- 
pers, and left carpet-bags in lieu of unpaid board bills upon his 
premises. 

Benson was dead, and what a savory flavor arises about the 
memory of the man who has for many years sustained a big 
tavern in a thoroughfare city. He has been hospitable to 
ungrateful millions, and they remember him not, except for 
lingering dyspepsias which he presented to them as his busi- 
ness card. When the great day of judgment comes, and they 
call the name of certain among hotel keepers, there will be a 
stir and a sensation, and perhaps apprehensions about the resur 
rection of the body, of which they were so great afflicters. 
Taverns seem to have changed very little since the beginning 
of the Christian era. With Benson's death in our mind, the 
keeper of a vast gravy-table, and a honeycomb of cheap bed- 
chambers in a political city, how easy it is to make a secular 
conception of the Inn at Bethlehem, where there was " no 
room " for the poor carpenter and his wife. You can see it 
all : the property-holders going up to be numbered by the 
Internal Revenue Officers ; hackmen with camels at the front 
door, flourishing whip-handles ; the gorgeous hotel clerk with 
a pen behind his ear, snubbing Joseph, and the poor carpenter 
turning about to say in sore spirits : 



468 THE WOEST OP WASHINGTON LIFE. 

" There is no room for us in the inn ! " 

History repeats itself! Clad in a little brief authority, the 
hotel clerk was probably the same being in the first as in the 
nineteenth century. Benson's death has always been a large 
matter whenever a tavern-keeper died. 

But this Benson kept the National Hotel — the place where 
the mysterious disease raged about the period of James 
Buchanan's inauguration, but not while Benson was proprietor. 
Many persons are supposed to have died with this disease, and 
others retained the seeds of it through suffering years, some 
of which latter class live yet, unconscious of the cause of their 
pain. All sorts of theories prevail with regard to this local 
epidemic — or, to speak correctly, this endemic, — a popular one 
being that it was occasioned by pro-slavery demons, who 
poisoned the food or cisterns in order to kill Buchanan, and 
throw the government into the hands of Breckinridge ; but 
this theory, I apprehend, never obtained credit with philosophic 
people. 

I replied to my informant, when he said that Benson was 
dead, by saying : 

" I wonder if anybody ever guessed what made the disease 
at the National ? " 

" I know ! "said Uns worth. " I was the superintendent of 
the wine-room there at the time, and a few weeks previously 
had been superintendent of the whole house. 

" You see, Guy, of Baltimore, came down here, resolved to 
make the National the best hotel, for table accommodations, in 
the country. I was employed at $75 a month to keep the 
wine-room. Guy paid good wages, and kept perhaps three 
hundred persons employed about the place. As long as he 
was himself, the hotel equaled his expectations ; the bill of 
fare was one of the best and largest ever seen in America ; 
and the National did the great business of the Capital. That 
was the reason Buchanan and so many leading people stopped 
there." 

" Well ! Guy took to drinking, and was on the e-we of losing 



ORIGIN OF NATIONAL HOTEL DISEASE. 469 

his mind, as lie afterward did lose it, entirely ; and, seeing 
that he would soon be unable to attend to the place, he came 
to me and asked me to exercise general superintendence till he 
was well enough to make other arrangements. This I did, 
out of regard for him, although I was quite disabled by the 
work I had to do. The hotel gradually lost its system and 
order, changed proprietors, and a person from the North came 
on to be the superintendent. He resolved to reduce expenses, 
and had me muster the waiters, and others, to discharge the 
superfluous, and to cut down the wages of those retained. The 
first thing he did was to cut off the seven waiters whom I 
employed for no other purpose than to clean the filth and 
waste from the lower part of the building. 

" You can have no conception of the amount of offal, and 
corruptible matter which accumulates in the larders, kitchens, 
and sewers of a large hotel. The National, in particular, is 
an old, soggy, rotten house, stuffed with dead rats, pierced 
beneath with a complex system of sewerage, and the slope 
thereabout is slight, so that the refuse in the sewers cannot 
run off easily. Hence, it makes vapors and odors, which 
escape, generally speaking, through the valves and taps at the 
street curb-stones. 

" At and before the time of the National Hotel disease, two 
things happened to make all the gases and vapors ascend by 
night directly up into, and through the house. First, the 
people in the neighborhood complained of stench, and head- 
aches arising from the open sewers, and the authorities of the 
city had all the valves capped. Secondly, the force was taken 
off which had been used to clean the basement every night, 
and, in a little while, the bottom of the house was like a grave- 
yard, filled with decaying bones, carcasses, and offal. 

" It was a very mild winter, and, as long as the nights kept 
cold, nobody was affected; but, in the warm weather, the vile 
air, like a mist of stench, climbed up the corridors, and went 
rambling about the house. People would come to breakfast in 
the morning and be seized with diarrhea, which would prey 



470 THE WORST OP WASHINGTON LIFE. 

upon them. The rumor of the disease filled everybody with 
fright. The head cook, a Frenchman, came to me and said : 

" What is ze mattare, Meester Unswort ? zey say I poison 
ze people. I do not know nothing about it at all. What is 
zis ? Mon Dieu, will you tell me ! ' 

" ' Yes,' said I, < I'll tell you.' 

" I took him to the basement, and told him to lean over one 
of the valves, while I lifted the cap. He drew a single breath 
and fell as if I had knocked him down. 

" Nobody who slept out of the house took the disease. I 
got my meals there, and slept out, after I discovered the symp- 
toms. And I escaped the disease." 

This I suppose to have been the true matter with this ancient 
hostelry : untimely economy, and the march of dirt. It is the 
property of one of the Calverts, descendants of a Lord 'Balti- 
more, and it is now alleged that he means to erect upon the 
old site, the largest hotel edifice in the country. In this old 
rookery died Henry Clay. 

To refer to " the worst of Washington" without saying some-, 
thing of the demoralization slavery inflicted upon the place, 
would be to own its cause for effect. 

Slavery preceded the District, but its penalties were tightened 
by the growing antagonism to it. 

In 1827, a committee of Congress reported that the legal 
presumption was that persons of color going at large in the 
District, without any evidences of their freedom, are abscond- 
ing slaves. The testimony of no free negro or mulatto, was 
received as evidence in the District. " The Capital," says 
Henry Wilson, " early became a great slave mart. There 
grew up a race of official and unofficial man-hunters, greedy, 
active, dexterous ; ever ready by falsehood, trickery and violence, 
to clutch the black man who carried not with him his title to 
freedom." In 1816, John Randolph moved the appointment 
of a Committee to consider the expediency of putting an end 
to the slave trade in the District. Judge Morrall also charged 
the Grand-jury that " the frequency with which the streets of 



ORGANIZATION OF ABOLITION SOCIETIES. 471 

the city had been crowded with manacled captives, sometimes 
on the Sabbath, could not fail to shock the feelings of all 
humane persons." The Washington Spectator in 1830, de- 
nounced processions of negroes hand-cuffed and chained in 
pairs, moving through the streets. Nevertheless, slave-traders 
were licensed by the City Corporations for the paltry sum of 
four hundred dollars, and in 1836 it was enacted that any free 
colored person at large after 10 o'clock at night, should go to 
jail. The malicious zeal of the Washington and Georgetown 
authorities to oppress free negroes, and serve the interests of 
slave-holders led to a counter feeling, and a strong anti-slavery 
spirit grew up which was helped by some outrages committed 
on white visitors who patronized the Northern anti-slavery 
papers. Petitions against slavery were poured in upon Con- 
gress, and many strong scenes happened in the Capital. Mr. 
Rhett of South Carolina, on one occasion significantly calling 
upon the entire delegation from all the slave-holding states to 
retire from the Hall of Representatives and to meet in the room 
of the Committee on the District of Columbia. 

As early as 1829 a convention for the Abolition of Slavery 
met at Washington, and about 1835 Benjamin Lundy estab- 
lished there his paper, called " The Genius of Universal 
Emancipation", thereby forestalling Garrison who had designed 
to print " The Liberator" at the Capital. Mr. Lundy, who 
was the Peter the Hermit of " the agitation," got nearly a 
thousand names to a memorial against slavery which was 
presented in Congress by the people of the District. I have re- 
cently found a copy of this memorial, which relates amongst 
other things, that a free colored man had been arrested on 
suspicion of being a runaway, and although nobody claimed 
him he was sold for life by the District authorities for the pay- 
ment of his jail fees and sent by a slave buyer to Louisiana. 
." We blush for our country," say the petitioners," while we 
relate this disgraceful transaction. 

In 1835 that persevering apostle, Lundy, established at the 
Capital his paper called " The Genius of Universal Emancipa- 
tion." 



472 



THE WORST OP WASHINGTON LIFE. 



The corporation of Georgetown in 1832 made it penal for 
any free person of color to take " The Liberator" from the 
Post-Office, and non-payment of the fine involved sale into 
slavery. 

In 1816 the American Colonization Society had been organ- 
ized at Washington and it was for forty years the social oppo- 
nent of the Abolition Society, standing upon national and 
orthodox ground and requiring no better opposition than the 
excesses of speech and the heterodoxy of religion and the de- 
nunciation oi the Union by the Anti-Slavery leaders. The 
fine edifice of this Society still stands on Pennsylvania Avenue, 
but its utility is for the present over. 




COLUMBIA SLAVE PEN. 



FEEEDMAN S SAVINGS BANKS. 



The slave pen or jail of the District of Columbia was a small 
two story brick house with an attachment like a kitchen which 
contained two barred windows. It was a more modest and 
more innocent looking structure than the celebrated slave pen 
at Alexandria which was gutted out during the war. The 
sources of supply for the District trade were the large planta- 
tions in the old adjaceut parts of Maryland where the land 
was so exhausted that it hardly gave sustenance, while mean- 
time the proprietors hunted, fed, and frollicked just as in bet- 
ter days and found the most spontaneous and reliable of their 
resources to be the increase and marketableness of dusky hu- 



COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION IN THE DISTRICT. 473 

man nature. It was not uncommon as well for Congressmen, 
Bureau officers, and the loitering gentry of Washington to so 
embarrass themselves at the gaming tables as to be obliged to 
sell their body servants. The demand for slaves was such in 
the South that slave buyers were as widely ubiquitous and vig- 
ilant in the streets as horse jockeys. ■ They dressed in such a 
manner as to be known to everybody, and were apprized of the 
straits, needs, and temptations of everybody holding a slave. 
In 1850 there were about 3,700 slaves in the District and three 
free negroes to each slave, but in Maryland there were more 
than 90,000 slaves. 

Slavery languished along in the District of Columbia until , 
April, 1862, when it perished nine months in advance of 
the Act of Emancipation. The Senate passed the bill for 
compensated emancipation (at an allowance in the aggregate 
of $300 for each slave) by a vote of 29 to 14 ; the House stood 
92 to 39. The appropriation was $1,000,000 to pay loyal own- 
ers and $100,000 to colonize slaves. 

Drunkenness of a gross sort is declining in Washington, but 
we have had many notable instances of its ravages even in our 
day. 

When the juices of the rye get possession of a clever man 
they make a lunatic asylum of him. There was one man 
here whose face looked like death. He was a Senator and 
man of past prominence. He came to Washington a drunk- 
ard, known to be such, I suspect, to the people of his State. 
Much was expected of him, and he began fairly. But rye 
whiskey flows straight toward a man's moral courage, like a 
wrecker that first puts out the lighthouse lamp. Being drunk 
half the time he sub-divided the drunken half into licentious- 
ness and gambling, while the sober half was classified into 
remorse and soda water. Once he joined the Congressional 
Temperance Society, and like a poor weak will, outlived all 
self-denial, he became an Apostle before he had got quite sober. 
He made a speech of such fervid good intentions that you 
could smell the liquor in them. Nature means to let no man 



474 THE WURST OF WASHINGTON LIFE. 

make capital either in vanity or enthusiasm out of her broken 
commandments, and she struck down this vaunter of a tem- 
perance he had not yet begun to live, like St. Paul smitten 
from his horse. He read his poor wife's glad gratulations aloud, 
throwing his hearth open to the crowd, and went down from 
applause to stupor, treating his good intentions. A few weeks 
ago he went upon a long debauch of the lowest sort, leaving 
his family in despair. His State delegation compelled him to 
come to the impeachment trial under threat of procuring his 
expulsion. There he sits among his recollections, still drink- 
ing to keep alive. His complexion is saffron ; the ligaments 
of his cheeks are seen through the skin ; his hair is as dry as 
if its oils were burnt out with alcohol ; his " lack-lustre dead 
blue eye" shows like melted glass. The papers from every- 
where come to him with upbraidings. He cannot see nor reason 
sanely upon himself, but, sitting in the Senate, beguiles the 
time with reminiscences of that Cyprian, who, jealous of the 
rare prize of a Senator, sits yonder in the gallery now, looking 
upon him with a smile in her heart. 



,. OHAPTEE XXX. 



THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS REVOLUTIONS. 

Senator Carl Schurz, whom nobody will deny to be a pure, 
educated, and traveled gentleman, expressed, in the American 
Senate, in 1871, the well-accredited belief amongst the people, 
that politics as it is must be congenial only to knaves. 

Schurz' s original and quoted charges at that time were that 
" office brokerages " existed here ; that Bishop Hughes for- 
merly had one Livingstone kept over two administrations as 
Appraiser at New York, at a loss of two millions a month ; 
that Grant had, in seven days, appointed one man, through 
successive rejections, to five offices ; that Colonel Murphy has 
had fifteen hundred applications for office ; that John Morissey 
had put a man in the Treasury Department in a picked place ; 
that in the New York Custom House it is the rule and not the 
exception to take bribes ; that five Collectors of San Francisco 
have been defaulters ; that from twelve millions to twenty-five 
millions of dollars are lost annually by frauds in the New York 
Custom House ; that every change of Collector of the Port 
there costs the country ten million of dollars through confu- 
sion and disorder ; that in one judicial district there had been 
three changes of United States Attorney in two years, and 
that these three were now defending criminals they prosecuted 
while in office, " with all the secrets of the Government in 
their possession ;" that " rings '*' existed in the Departments 
to keep down the quotum of work per diem, — benefit associa- 

(475) 



476 THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS REVOLUTIONS. 

tions in the interest of the lazy ; that Senators are in the habit 
of recommending men to office and then privately writing let- 
ters against them ; that Secretaries are threatened by Con- 
gressmen with voting against their appropriations unless their 
men are rewarded. Schurz put this question, and answered 
it mildly : 

'" Can a Congressman, under the present system be entirely 
innocent ?' That question has been addressed to me by an in- 
telligent observer, and my first impulse was at once to say, 
' certainly he can.' Yes, I believe he can ; but I declare, sir, 
when you survey the whole field, when you study the influ- 
ences of the present system upon the frailties of human nature, 
you will admit that it is exceedingly difficult for him to be so. 
The system is a hot-bed of that peculiar kind of corruption 
which is the more dangerous as it does not appear in the pal- 
pable, gross, and unequivocal form of "money, but appears in 
the seductive shape sometimes of an apparently honorable 
political or personal obligation. It insinuates itself like a 
subtle poison into those crevices of the human conscience which 
are opened by the expansion of generous feelings." 

Schurz referred to Lincoln's saying : " We have mastered 
the rebellion, but this office-begging army will, in time, become 
N more formidable in time than the rebellion itself." 
1 This speech of Senator Schurz cannot be condensed here, 
being in itself a dense condensation of evils. Nobody objected 
to it, except some of the old reprobates of politics, who lie, 
like dead nerves in the head of the government, insensible to 
anything. No man can read it and expect, afterward, to see 
reform and decency under our present system any more than 
there can be happiness in a family where the women are wan- 
tons and the men rob. Schurz proposed a Civil Service Board 
of nine Commissioners, who shall divide the country into ter- 
ritorial districts and hold examinations periodically. The 
President shall nominate and the Senate confirm them ; the 
only appointments exempt from the examination shall be 



PROBABILITIES FOR THE FUTURE. 477 

Cabinet and foreign Ministers, Judges and clerks of the courts, 
and officers of Congress. 

Since that time we have had a fancied Civil Service, appar- 
ently intended to bring the reform into contempt, and to head 
off such speeches as the above. 

Both houses of Congress may be said, without scandal, to 
contain a very considerable minority of corrupt men. Of their 
working majority a comparatively small portion comes under 
the head of constant and steady jobbers ; but in each of the 
big committees these same professional advocates of jobbery 
have prominent places, and they balance in influence all the 
rest of Congress. Such men have, from time to time, thrown 
a little piece of spoil into the way of some more scrupulous 
colleague or friend on the floor, and the scrupulous man is in 
more distress lest that one peccadillo may come out than the 
full-blooded jobber about all his villiany. This was a part of 
the situation in 1873. 

A long recess takes place between the 4th of March and 
the following December. During that interim the public press 
will have the calmest opportunity to make a grand inquest of 
the nation upon the hundred or more great corruptions which 
equal the Credit Mohilier in venality. Although the Congress 
to come contains a large proportion of jobbers, many of these 
will probably find their occupation gone, because the land-grant 
system has no legs to stand upon any longer. A change of 
the officers of the House of Representatives will accomplish a 
good purpose ; and one of these, namely, Bill King, of Minne- 
sota, a notorious lobbyist, and the Postmaster of the House, 
has voluntarily taken himself out of the way, having secured 
an enormous contract on the Northern Pacific Railroad, whose 
bill he helped to pass. 

Another officer of the house, Sergeant-at-Arms Ordway, of 
New Hampshire, whose office has been a bank of deposit for 
Oakes Ames and other schemers, proposes with diminished 
chances, to make another run, and he is said to rely upon the 
power which he holds over certain members, whose financial 



478 THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS KEVOLUTIONS. 

transactions he is said to have control of. To Ordway will be 
opposed Jee Dwyer, a henchman of the Delano clique, and this 
selection will be out of the frying pan into the fire. While 
there are several excellent officers on the House side, attentive 
and industrious, particularly in the document rooms and the 
folding rooms, at the same time the doorkeeper's department 
and part of the clerk's department and a majority of the com- 
mittee clerks have touched the silver of the schemers, and 
wait for each new session to come about to lay by an unearned 
penny. 

The Ways and Means and the Appropriations Committee, 
.and two or three other important committees are esquired by 
men who know the full value of a wink or a word, and of 
whom it will be impossible to expect anything better. It ought 
to be the ruie that a chairman of committee is to be judged by 
the character of his clerk as well as by his own ; for the clerk 
is the officer of the watch, and if he hold over from Congress 
to Congress he will obtain, with ordinary method, the run of 
the Committee. The clerk lately before the Ways and Means 
Committee, on the charge of having offered his services to a 
brokers' combination for $500 a month, and $5,000 when the 
bill in purchase passed, used to be so indispensable to General 
Schenck that when Schenck put through his bills he would 
have the man by his side to compute for him and supply points 
and figures. 

The office of Speaker is so exceedingly powerful that the 
caucus fashion of naming the man has come to be of very 
doubtful propriety. We can see now that it was not until 
Schuyler Colfax had left the chair altogether and retired from 
the House that his little acts of consideration for envelope- 
makers, shovel makers, iron makers, express companies, &c, 
were found out. Without a perfectly high-minded Speaker and 
absolutely honest men at the heads of the four or five lead- 
ing committees all legislation will inevitably be diseased. 

Apprehensive that their misdeeds cannot be hidden much 
longer, a great many members and Senators are now making 



SCHEMES NEEDING VENTILATION. 479 

the point, through their political organs, that a public man has 
a perfect right to own railroad stocks, &c. If this point be 
admitted the tone of Congressional life would at once be set ten 
degrees lower than heretofore ; for up to this time it has been 
to such an extent dishonorable to hold stock in affairs requir- 
ing recognition of any kind from Congress, that men like 
Mr. Colfax made a profound secret of their investments 
under this head. 

Among the schemes which need perfect ventilation as soon 
as the coming Congress meets, are the whole series of Iowa 
Railroads, the passage of the additional subsidy to the Pacific 
Mail Steamship Company, the passage of the Texas Pacific 
bill, the facts under which such railroads as the Cairo and Ful- 
ton had their land grants extended, the combinations which 
exist to force the railways on the border of the Indian Territory 
through that region and extort land grants at the expense of 
the civilized Indian, and also the manner of building the Cen- 
tral Pacific Railroad, and the sums of money which it has paid 
to Senators from California and Nevada, and perhaps from some 
of the Eastern States. 

From this list of jobs it will be seen that the matter of sub- 
sidies in lands and moneys has involved the major portion of 
public corruption. There are two States of the West in which 
the land-grant system has wrought complete demoralization of 
political sentiment, and captured the press, the Legislature, and 
finally, the Land Office at Washington city. 

Prior to the time ,of the building of the Pacific Railway, 
measures were made to open railways across Iowa as feeders 
of the great overland line. From Council Bluffs to Dubuque, 
from Sioux City to Burlington, the public men of Iowa were 
brought into accord with these railroad enterprises, the money 
for the same being to a considerable degree supplied by Oakes 
Ames, Samuel Hooper, and Eastern capitalists, until finally the 
railroad interest brought a man from Iowa to preside over their 
land affairs in Washington, and the belief is a growing one 



480 THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS REVOLUTIONS. 

here, that the Land Commissioner is nearly as much of a rail- 
road instrumentality as Hubbard, or Allison, or Wilson, or 
Harlan. 

Meantime the State of Kansas found its way into land 
swindling through the Kansas Pacific Railroad, whose attorneys 
afterwards occupied the same relation to the Northern Pacific 
Railroad. The State of Kansas has suffered even more than 
Iowa from railroad rapacity and corruption, and the horrible 
sensations aroused by Caldwell's and Pomeroy's elections were 
the legitimate deductions of the Kansas Pacific corruption and 
three or four other railroad jobs in the bleeding State. It 
ought to be out of the power of any caucus or party organiza- 
tion to bridge the present excitement over by any mere recess. 
The next Congress will be called upon to take the positive step 
of disbanding some of these railway companies and confiscat- 
ing the property they have acquired from the Government, 
unless meantime some one of these bloated corporations should 
fail of its own rottenness or absurdity, and so precipitate a gen- 
eral panic in wild-cat railway securities. The like view is en- 
tertained by some shrewd observers, who have indicated one of 
the great new roads of the West as probably destined to col- 
lapse. Many critics believe that some wholesome panic or 
calamity of this kind is essential to purify legislation and bring 
Congress back to some modest and careful principles of gov- 
ernment. The bounteous and profligate spirit of the old Fed- 
eral party, which took advantage of the earnestness of the 
country at the outbreak of the war, has clutched it ever since, 
like a horse leech, and must be chastised if we are to have any 
comprehensible institutions and preserve the character of the 
Republic. 

President Grant, who is not a politician, has been led into 
endorsement of such schemes as ,the James and Kanawha 
Canal and the Tennessee and Coosa Canal Company. It is 
well known in this city that both of these enterprises are in 
the hands of two or three unscrupulous claim agents, some of 
whom were formerly renegade office-holders, and their scheme 



HOW THE WOMEN HELP. 481 

of securing an endorsement of bonds merely means a grand 
wholesale steal, and the distribution of the largest part of the 
plunder around Washington city. Washington itself has been 
transformed into a depot for claim, county, subsidy, and exper- 
imental attorneys who reside here permanently, are numbered by 
hundreds, and have been recently recruited by some of the most 
learned legal prostitutes in the United States. These people make 
a corrupt atmosphere about the Capitol, and through the depart- 
ments and other influences extend to what is called" Washing- 
ton society," which during the past Winter has been at the ■ 
same time unusually brilliant and equally hollow and corrupt. 
Women have come to adopt the business of jobbing agents, 
and many of these, with the consent of their husbands, use 
society to obtain an influence over public life, which is rapidly 
undermining the whole fabric of public spiritedness and states- 
manliness. It is not an uncommon thing to walk around 
Washington and have this or that house pointed out as the 
proceeds of a jobbing intrigue, where the successful attorney 
or conspirator entrenches himself, or herself, as a. durable fea- 
ture in social life, and must pursue the same line of business 
hereafter in order to support the extravagance of the social 
establishment. 

Not even the Courts of Justice have escaped contamination,, 
for the lobbies of those Courts approach in dishonesty the lob- 
bies of the Capitol. This remark is not confined to any par- 
ticular Court, it embraces the commissions^ as well as the 
Courts, and has taken the form even of international scandal. 
Crude, open lobbyists, in the yearly pay of great railways, are 
admitted to the tables of people considered to be of the high- 
est social consequence, where can be heard descriptions of last 
night's game of poker, of the shrewd tricks played upon verdant 
heads of Bureaux, and jests are freely made between men and 
women upon the success of their neighbors and acquaintances 
in operations scandalous to good morals and true patriotism. 
The Credit Mobilier exposures were requisite to show that not 
even the lobby was perfectly aware of the height to which ras- 
31 



482 THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS REVOLUTION. 

cality had reached during the last ten years of almost univer- 
sal speculation. 

The Land Office records show that about 180,000 square 
miles of the, best land in the public domain have already been 
promised away to private corporations, equal in extent to the 
six great Western States, which are to be represented in the 
next Congress by twelve Senators and sixty Representatives. 

While the Pennsylvania Railroad is alleged to control, 
directly or indirectly, in the present or prospectively, above 
12,000 miles of road, which represent above $500,000,000 of 
stock, the Central Pacific Company of California threatens to 
become the sole carrier for all that coast, and the Union Pacific 
Railroad must inevitably fall into its hands, unless anticipated 
by the Pennsylvania road, which may undertake to build from 
Salt Lake to the Western coast. These enormous operations 
in land and railways, inevitably concentrate in time into a very 
few hands, and the Central Pacific may be said to be the per- 
sonal property at present of only four or five persons. ' Cor- 
rupt bankers, corrupt manufacturers of iron, and corrupt rail- 
road speculators divide equally in these schemes, and the bonds 
precipitated upon the domestic and foreign market by the stim- 
ulation of the land-grant system make a perpetual carousal at 
the Capital City, where a portion of the plunder is divided and 
the extravagance of social life widened. Amid such vast spec- 
ulativeness the integrity of parties has been blotted out, and 
for years past a portion of the democrats have shared with the 
republicans in plunder of all sorts. These democratic plunder- 
ers may be traced into almost all the States, to Kentucky and 
Wisconsin, to New York and Indiana, to Missouri and to Ala- 
bama. The National Convention is a mere farce, manipulated 
by these jobbers, who undermine both parties ; and it appears 
probable, from recent developments, that the Louisville Con- 
vention of Bourbons, as well as the Baltimore Convention of 
liberal Democrats, were both controlled by agents or principals 
in railway swindling. 

I propose to make a portion of this description plain by 



BOASTS OF EAILROAD MEN. 483 

detailing some of the railroad operations which apparently 
emanate from Iowa, and are traced to the Land Office in this 
city. 

It has been a frequent boast among railroad men and their 
agents, that both Secretary Delano and Commissioner Drum- 
mond were put in their present position through railroad influ- 
ence, because that interest was determined to control the Inte- 
rior Department so long as a single land grant remained unad- 
justed. It was known that they were both more or less con- 
nected with railroad enterprises, and the railroad interest had 
confidence in them, and used its influence to secure their appoint- 
ment. The opposition to Secretary Cox, which ultimately re- 
sulted in his resignation, is said to have come Irom the same 
quarter. Repeated efforts were made to manipulate him in their 
interest, but in vain. Hence, they determined to get him out of 
the way. His action in the McGarrahan case was a mere acci- 
dent, and perhaps pretext, to cover the conspiracy which had 
already virtually secured his removal. 

Whether it was a vain boast of the railroad men that they 
would control the Department needs no answer to those who 
are acquainted with the administration of the affairs of the 
General Land Office since Delano and Drummond were placed 
in charge. It would seem that nothing has been wanting that 
was calculated to make good their, prophecy. No demand 
made by a railroad company is denied, be it ever so absurd 
and unlawful. Their agents and attorneys have full sweep of 
the Department, with free access to its files and records, while 
the attorneys for settlers are inconveniently restricted in the 
privileges of the office. The utmost diligence is used to des- 
patch the business of the railroad companies, although the 
business of the settlers "arising under the Homestead and Pre- 
emption laws, is more than a year behind. 

Willis Drummond is a man of about forty-three years of age, 
of a tall, somewhat slender figure, probably six feet in height, 
with black hair, full black whiskers and mustache closely cropped, 
and a pair of roving black eyes, which denote a person of sagac- 



484 THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS EEVOLUTIONS. 

ity rather than of wisdom. He has a dark complexion and irreg- 
ular features, which make up the ensemble of a face that would 
hardly attract the gaze of the poet. A person of slow percep- 
tions, he is the slave of strong prejudices,, and withal so obsti- 
nate as to suggest the stubbornness of the bull that will not 
get out of the way of the locomotive. After a service of several 
years as Commissioner, he has not acquired even a tolerable 
knowledge of the public land system. As a consequence, he is 
compelled to rely almost wholly upon his heads of divisions, and 
when they take a position he fights their battles, whether right 
or wrong, and usually succeeds, by dint of perseverance and 
unyielding doggedness, in sustaining them. He is, therefore, 
well calculated to perform the service required of him by those 
who put him in position. It is said that he served in the army 
during the rebellion, rising to the rank of major, after which 
he settled at McGregor's Landing, on the Mississippi River in 
Iowa, and entered upon the practice of law. Mixing himself 
up with politics, he drifted into the position of Supervisor of 
Internal Revenue, in one of the districts of that State. He 
became also a director of the McGregor and Western Railroad, 
which brought him prominently into the notice of such men 
as James F. Wilson, W. B. Allison and others of the Iowa land 
grant speculators, who recognized in him qualities that emi- 
nently fitted him for the style of Land Commissioner they were 
seeking. 

It is to be noted that by far the largest part of the mischief 
wrought in the Departments by the railroad interest, was the 
work of this meddlesome, active, and. corrupt nest ,6'f Iowa, 
politicians. 

By an act passed in 1856., donating lands to that State to 
aid in the construction of railroads, four line's of : road were 
authorized. In view of the fraud and isOrrtiptiom that . have 
grown out of this subsidy, it becomes, at this late day, a 
serious question whether it was not a curse, both local and 
national, rather than a blessing. These are the railroad fellows 
who have their grip upon the vitals of the Interior Depart- 
ment, and whose agents boastingly declare the act. 



JOBBERY IN THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT. 485 

One of the first acts of the Delano-Drummond rSgime favor- 
able to this interest was the re-opening of the' claim made by 
the Burlington and Missouri Railroad Company, one of the four 
roads above referred to, which claim had been settled adversely 
by Secretary Browning. The decision of the latter, having 
reversed that of his predecessor, Mr. Harlan, was concurred 
in by Secretary Cox. Nevertheless, Mr. Delano reinstated 
Harlan's decision giving to the company named a million of 
acres not granted by Congress. A narrative of some of the 
antics of Mr. Drummond in connection with this case may 
serve to illustrate how strongly the railroad companies are 
entrenched in the General Land Office. This will involve an 
account of the vicissitudes of a newspaper correspondent in 
that office, while there seeking information for the benefit of 
the public. He has stumbled upon the trail of the Burlington 
job, and proceeded to work it up as rapidly as possible, in order 
to prevent the consummation of the scheme in Congress. His 
letter was published in one of the leading New York papers in 
December, 1871, and it fell like a thunderbolt among the rail- 
roaders in and about the Land office. Their game was up for 
the time being. Although, their bill was prepared to confirm 
to the company title of the land involved in Delano's decision, 
yet it would never do to present it to Congress until the storm 
had passed away. Then there was hurrying to and fro, and 
diligent search in spying out the recreant clerk who had given 
out the information. If there was a traitor in the camp his 
head must come off, and that quickly ; for otherwise there 
could be> no safety in pursuing their unlawful schemes. A day 
after the appearance of the obnoxious article the following 
order was posted on the doors of the General Land Office : — 

\ BEWARE OF THE DOG. 

Department of the Interior, } 

Washington, D. C, Dec. 1, 1871. | 

It is ordered that attorneys and other agents be prohibited from examin- 
ing papers and files in the custody of clerks, or from conversing with the 
clerks in regard to claims or cases in their hands for examination or other 



486 THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS EEVOLUTIONS. , 

official action, without written leave or direction from the Secretary or 
Assistant Secretary of the Interior, or the head of the proper bureau ; and 
that if any attorney or agent shall hereafter violate this order, all further 
official communication with him shall be suspended. 

The clerks and employes are prohibited from giving information to any 
one in relation to the business of the Department, or any of its bureaux, or 
of the condition or progress of any claim or case, unless instructed to do so 
by the Secretary, the Assistant Secretary, or the head of the proper bureau ; 
and any violation of this order will subject the offender to immediate 
dismissal. 

Columbus Delano, Secretary. 

One trick of this circular is in its date. It was posted on 
the day following the publication — namely, December 19, — but 
dated back the 1st of the month, so that it would not appear 
to have been occasioned by the exposure. 

The order has been rigidly enforced against all but railroad 
attorneys. About the time it first appeared the correspondent 
referred to asked for permission to see the papers in the Bur- 
lington case, which was freely given, for he was not suspected 
of being the author of the offensive article. During the past 
Summer, in order to refresh his memory and for-the purpose of 
examining a paper which he had not seen on the first occasion, 
he called upon the Commissioner, and the following conversa- 
tion occurred : 

Correspondent : Dr. Drummond, I understand that before 
Secretary Delano rendered his decision sustaining the claim of 
the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company to lands 
outside of the limit of their grant in Nebraska, he wrote a 
letter to Judge Hoar, requesting that gentleman's opinion as 
to the proper construction of the grant made to that company 
in the act of July 2, 1864, and that Judge Hoar, in response, 
gave his opinion, which is on file, with the papers in the case. 
If you please, I would like to see the document. 

Commissioner (with a greatly perplexed air) : For what 
purpose do you wish to see it ? 

Correspondent : I wish to satisfy myself upon some points 
in question relating to the Secretary's decision. 



OFFICIAL EXCLUSIVENESS. m 487 

This was going directly to business. The Commissioner 
knew his refusal to show the document would be placing a 
weapon in the hands of his antagonist which might be used 
with considerable effect, and that on the other hand he would 
be little better off after allowing the paper to be scrutinized. 

Commissioner (hesitatingly) : I don't think the papers are 
in this office ; I think they are in the Secretary's office. 

Correspondent : I was under the impression that after the 
case was settled by Mr. Delano's decision the papers were sent 
to your office, which I understand to be the proper place to file 
them. 

Commissioner : I will see where they are. 

A messenger was sent for the head clerk of the railroad di- 
es j 

vision, who had custody of the papers, but that clerk was re- 
ported absent, whereupon the Commissioner suggested that the 
correspondent call at another time. Agreeably with the sug- 
gestion he presented himself on the following day, apparently 
to the annoyance of the Commissioner, who, nevertheless, sum- 
moned a clerk, and after a whispered conference, said, " The 
papers are in the Secretary's office, and I have no doubt he 
will let you see them." 

Wending his way to that part of the building in which the 
Secretary's office is located, the correspondent entered the room 
of Mr. Sturgis, who has charge of the railroad branch of the 
Secretary's office. 

Correspondent : Mr. Sturgis, Commissioner Drummond tells 
me that you have the papers in the Burlington case, and that 
you will let me see them. 

Mr. Sturgis : Are you an attorney in the case, sir ? 

Correspondent : No, sir ; I write for the press. 

Mr. Sturgis : Ah ! What is the name ? I see I shall have 
to speak with the Secretary. 

A card was given and Mr. Sturgis disappeared. After a 
short absence he returned and indicated that permission had 
been given by turning to the files and affecting to search for 
the papers. His search was soon brought to an abrupt close 



488 THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS REVOLUTIONS. 

in a manner which might indicate anything but a disposition 
to produce the papers. He said that he was ignorant of their 
whereabouts, but that his assistant, who was then absent, could 
no doubt lay his hands upon them, and that, " if you will call 
again, I will try and have them for you." 

Not to be baffled by weariness of these delays, the corres- 
pondent presented himself promptly on the following morning, 
when he was told by Mr. Sturgis that the papers were in the 
Commissioner's possession. Returning to the room of the 
latter, the following ensued : — ■ 

Correspondent : For two days, Mr. Commissioner, I have 
been vainly striving to get sight of Judge Hoar's opinion. 
Upon my first application you said that the clerk who had 
charge of it was absent. I called again yesterday and was 
told by you that the Secretary had the papers. I am here now 
for the third time, with information that you have them. 

Commissioner : These papers emanated from the Secretary 
and are not a part of the records of my office. I do not feel 
authorized to show them without the Secretary's permission. 

Correspondent : Permit me to remind you, Mr. Drummond, 
that when, some months ago, I asked permission to examine 
the papers, so far from raising the objection of the want of 
authority, you promptly and freely accorded me the privilege. 
This decision gives away public lands valued at five million 
dollars. Certainly you will not deny the right of the people 
to know upon what grounds their property has been disposed of ? 

Commissioner (excitedly) : I have nothing to do with it. 
I did not make the decision. I still say I do not feel at liberty 
to show you the papers without the consent of the Secretary. 

Correspondent : Very well ; I will try to obtain his consent. 

Retracing his steps to the room of Mr. Sturgis. Correspon- 
dent : Mr. Sturgis, the Commissioner says that the papers* are 
not technically a part of the records of his office, and that he 
has no authority to show them to me without an order from 
the Secretary. 

Mr. Sturgis : Oh, tut ! tut ! the Commissioner must paddle 



THE PEOPLE EXCLUDED. 489 

his own canoe. The papers belong to his office now, and we 
are not responsible. If any trouble grows out of his showing 
you the papers he must bear the onus. 

Another trip through the long corridors brought the corre- 
spondent again to the Commissioner's room. When he entered 
Mr. Drummond was engaged with others, and endeavored to 
escape the crisis by attending to everything and to the busi- 
ness of everybody else that would serve as an excuse to delay 
the production of the much-sought-for document. In this way 
nearly two hours passed, half of that time being consumed in 
hearing arguments pro and con in a contested case. After the 
office had been cleared the Commissioner, turning about, faced 
his untiring persecutor with a frenzied grin, which seemed to 
say, " Curse the villain !" The latter sat upon a sofa near by 
with a face expressive of the most profound resignation. 

Correspondent (laughing) : Mr. Sturgis says that you must 
paddle your own canoe — that his office disclaims all responsi- 
bility. 

Commissioner (immeasurably perplexed) : Well, you only 
want to look at them, do you ? 

Correspondent : That is all I have asked for, sir. 

The clerk was then summoned and directed to snow the 
paper, but received special instructions not to permit a copy to 
be taken. So, through the trickery and bad faith of Commis- 
sioner Drummond, the better part of three days was expended 
in the effort to see a paper that should be open to inspection at 
all times. 

As already stated, the above order is a dead letter so far as 
the railroad attorneys are concerned, but is rigidly enforced 
against all others. The same correspondent states that on one 
occasion, while he was engaged writing in the General Land. 
Office, he saw attorneys for settlers enter the room, each pre- 
senting to the head clerk his written permission, describing 
the papers he wished to see, and then taking his seat- at the 
table and waiting until they were brought to him, not being 
permitted to handle the files nor molest the cases containing 



490 THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS REVOLUTIONS. 

the records. On the other ' hand, he saw railroad attorneys 
and agents enter the room, and, without passes, select from 
the hies such papers as they wanted and examine ad libitum 
the records of the office without being questioned. The 
Washington agent for the Iowa railroad is Mr. William T. 
Steiger, an eccentric old philosopher, having an odd theory as 
to the instability of the earth's crust, together with an ingen- 
ious crustometer, the product of his own invention, by which 
he demonstrates that Washington City is sometimes shoved 
into blue" ether 1,200 feet above its normal altitude. Until 
recently he has occupied a room in the Interior Department, 
assigned to him as an office. His business is to see that the 
settlers get as little land as possible. 

He may be seen in the bookkeeper's division, spying out 
defects in the entries of poor, ignorant people, who have bee» 
unfortunate enough to settle within railroad limits, and causing 
them to be slaughtered like sheep by the unwilling pen of the 
canceling clerk, so that their land may inure to the railroad 
grant under a pernicious ruling of the Department. At another 
time this .diligent seeker after railroad honors and railroad 
pelf may be seen in the pre-emption division, following up 
with savage yelp the miserable pre-emptor, the favorable loca- 
tion of whose land stimulates the greed of the never-sated, 
conscienceless jobbers. He is to be found also in the patent 
division, urging to increased efforts the hard-worked and weary 
clerks who prepare the parchment for his capacious maw. 

There is one practice in which the Commissioner indulges 
that should not go unmentioned. When a case which has 
been decided by him is appealed to the Secretary, Mr. Drum- 
mond goes before him and argues and wrdngles with the 
persistence of a pettifogging lawyer in support of his own 
decision. Probably a parallel case would be that of- the judge 
of a court appearing before a tribunal superior to his, own, and 
arguing in support of a judgment rendered by him. Why the 
Secretary does not push this meddler into the hall needs 
answer. Come to think, we are answered. 



A LITTLE RAILROAD BUSINESS. 491 

To show the corruption of these gamblers in the wealth of 
the public domain and the future of Iowa, it may be mentioned 
that several years ago, through the Jesuitry of certain Iowa 
Congressmen, the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railroad 
got possession ol the Dubuque and Sioux City road, and then 
bent it out ot its line, which was to strike the Pacific Railroad 
at Columbus, Neb., down the east side of the Missouri River, 
to connect instead with their own road, and thus control both 
railways. Thus the Chicago and Northwestern Road in Iowa 
and the Iowa division of the Illinois Central, so called, and the 
Sioux City and Pacific Railroad are all three the prize of the 
same gang. The lawyers for this gang passed the Rock 
Island Bill through Congress, and expect to pass also a similar 
bill for the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad. 

To explain. The chaps who got control ot the Cedar Rapids 
and Missouri River Railroad let in the three Congressmen — 
Wilson, Allison, and Hubbard. It occurred to them that the 
more northerly road, if prolonged into Nebraska direct, would 
be a rival feeder to the Pacific Railway. Aware that a ninth 
of the road was held by Wilson, and a ninth bj> Allison, they 
visited Wilson first, and said, " We want your ninth to capture 
the Dubuque and Sioux City." Then proceeding to Dubuque, 
they, said to Allison, " We want your ninth to do the same." 

" I can't do it, upon my soul ! " exclaimed Allison. " My 
Dubuque people would kill me politically if I sold them out on 
the certainty of a short line to the Pacific ; but I will run 
down to Sioux City and pick up Hubbard's (the third Congress- 
man) interest and let you have it." 

This o was done, and Hubbard was deluded with the idea 
that after his ninth of the stock had been used to capture the 
Northern road he could get it back from Allison, taking 
Allison's ninth interest. 

Three-ninths make one-third. The three treasonable mem- 
bers of Congress Jiad fixed the fate of the Dubuque and Sioux 
City Railroad, and one of the tools and agents had been the 
Dubuque Congressman. The road fell into the hands of the 



492 THE LAND OFFICE AND ITS REVOLUTIONS. 

Cedar Rapids and Missouri River people. Then, instead of 
building straight across the Platte River, the conspirators had 
a route surveyed down the west side of the Missouri, over a 
rough, irregular country, and by collusion with the Land 
Office their survey was rejected as impracticable. Of course 
they surveyed west, down the east side of the Missouri, south- 
eastward toward the Cedar Rapids road, and through the 
noblest part, of course, where ten rich sections a mile meant a 
principality. Here, also, they could build for $16,000 per 
mile. This diverted survey was accepted, and by the diversion 
the stock of the Dubuque and Sioux City Railway fell down 
so flat that the conspirators picked up the remainder of it. 
If you will take up your railroad map to-day you will there- 
fore see that the Sioux City and Pacific Railway— the only 
extension of the Dubuque and Sioux City — curls about back- 
ward, gobbles up a kingdom of goodly land, and becomes a 
mere parasite of the Cedar Rapids and Missouri Road; and 
finally expires at Fremont, Neb. 

For doing a part of this work both Wilson and Allison were 
arraigned in a Cincinnati newspaper in 1868, and they both 
delivered speeches in Congress consigning the slanderer to 
perdition. Wilson said he had hoped to leave Congress 
" without a smell upon his garments," but he has been an 
" attorney in the departments '.' ever since, and goes by the 
name of the " Singed Cat." Allison, covering his tracks like 
an Indian, has been elected to the United States^ Senate for 
six years. 

Before concluding this chapter, let me note the contents of 
that heterogenous department, the Interior, where the inscru- 
table Delano presides. It has been for many years the hive 
of scandal in Washington, beset with attorneys, " rigs," right- 
handmen, and half-breeds, who sell out the patrimony of their 
red brethren. 

The Secretary of the Interior is provided with one assistant- 
secretary, a solicitor, and a chief clerk, and his office proper is 
separated into eight divisions, viz. : Public Documents, Dis- 



SALAEIES OP SOME OF THE BUREAUX. 493 

bursements, Appointments, Indian Affairs, Public Lands and 
Railroads, Pensions, Indian Trust Fund, and Superintendent 
of the Patent Office Building, giving employment to about 80 
clerks, messengers, mechanics, watchmen, and laborers. 

These divisions correspond, to some extent, with the prin- 
cipal Bureaux of the Department, entitled the Pension Office, 
General Land Office, Patent Office, Office of Indian Affairs, 
Census Office, and Office of Education. In addition to these, 
the Metropolitan Police of the District, the Insane Asylum and 
the Capitol Extension are under the supervision of this 
Department. 

The Pension Office is presided over by a Commissioner at a 
salary of $ 3,000 per annum, and contains about 270 clerks, 
22 copyists, and 32 messengers and laborers, and 59 pension 
agents are distributed throughout the States. 

There are employed in the General Land Office under the 
control of a Commissioner, who also receives a salary of 
$3,000, 145 clerks, 11 copyists, 6 messengers, and 9 laborers. 
In the work of surveying the public lands there are engaged 
17 surveyors-general, assigned to special districts, each pro- 
vided with clerks and draughtsmen. The registers and 
receivers of public lands number 82 respectively, and their 
offices are located throughout the Southern and Western States 
and the territories. The Surveyors-General and Registers 
and Receivers report to the Commissioner, in whose office are 
filed the maps and plots of surveys, and the returns of the 
local officers, showing the disposition made of the public lands 
in each district. Of late years the adjustment of land grants 
to railroad companies has greatly increased the business of 
this bureau, and has given rise to much scandal respecting the 
partial and unjust course pursued by the Commissioner and 
the Secretary in favor of these companies in their numerous 
contests with pre-emption and homestead settlers. 

The Patent Office occupies greater space in the building 
than any of the other bureaux, the model-room alone taking 
up one entire floor. The Commissioner of Patents receives a 



494 THE LAND OFFICF AND ITS KEVOLUTIONS. 

salary of 84,500. There is also an Assistant-Commissioner, 
at 83,000, a chief clerk at 82,500, 3 examiners-in-chief at 
83,000 each, 23 examiners at 82,500 each, 22 assistant- 
examiners at $1,800, and a like number of second assistant- 
examiners at $1,600 per annum each. About 265 clerks, 
copyists, etc., comprise the remainder of the force employed 
here. » 

The office of Indian Affairs is controlled by a Commissioner, 
who is assisted by 37 clerks and 5 messengers and laborers. 
To this bureau is assigned the important duty of directing its 
numerous superintendents and agents in their intercourse and 
dealings with the Indians, who are scattered from Lake 
Superior to the Pacific Ocean, and number about three 
hundred thousand. ► There are eight superintendents. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



HUMORS AND CLOUDS OP CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

If you had been a member of Congress, elected to go to 
Washington for the first time in your life, there would probably 
be, combined with a good deal of self-gratulation, some curios- 
ity in your mind as to what the Capital was, and how you should 
live there. 

In this mingled largeness and dependence, had you come 
here on Saturday, prior to a rainy Sunday a few years ago, you 
would have asked to be carried home within twelve hours, and 
buried amongst the ranks of the people. 

One Washington Sunday that 1 remember ! Such a day for 
squalls, and drizzle, and snow without purpose ; cold that had 
not the stamina to make anything freeze, yet was too mean not 
to keep one chilly; damp, and mud, and the sky scowling; an$ 
the wide, miry, rutted " Avenue" almost absolutely forsaken. 
It was like some awful days in camp, which your army friends 
remember yet with a desolation they can never tell. 

At 4 o'clock, or after dinner, I called on some friends at the 
hotels, and they already wore that look which married men 
away from home exhibit when sober, blank, fidgety disgust — 
the belief that life is a fraud, and Government a swindle. 

In one room at a big hotel I found a Governor and two of 
his prime Council, from a region far west of Chicago. A little 
sullen fire burned in the grate ; the tapestry carpet had neither 
nap nor figure; greasy and faded "rep" curtains made the 
place dusk; one old lounge with a creak in the back hid itself 

(495) 



496 HUM0R3 AND CLOUDS' OF CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

between the window and the old bier of a bed, and the two 
Councillors lay upon it. The gas was lighted in the daytime. 
I thought it was an upholstered purgatory. All of the inmates, 
family men, with children, with homes, they waited there, tell- 
ing stories and matter, every one of which thickened more the 
cloud on the brow, from their mere masculinity. 

The Governor jumped up at last. 

" I don't want to drink a drop. I said I wouldn't when I 
left home. But I'll take a drink because this is so infernally 
blue." 

There you have the Congressman away from home, flying 
out of atmosphere into appetite. 

Down stairs I found a gentleman of large capital or large 
ostentation, with a couple of parlors for which he probably 
paid twenty dollars a day, a servant of his own, and a side- 
board for anybody; on the sideboard cheese and crackers, 
brandy, true Espagnola cigars lying loose, whiskey, and a 
bright fire which he poked up himself to keep the ceiling lively. 
The host was a man, rich, large, of easy temper, of a gold 
seal, of the business world. What job he had, if any, I know 
not ; but in the politest and most enjoyable way he kept every- 
body at peace, announced that he was fixed for the session, and 
always at home to friends. Some attorney perhaps, in a vast 
jnterest, who has come early, come to stay, and come to win. 
To this gentleman, no doubt, the whole Congress was a parcel 
of smart boys, who would have to be encouraged up to the 
appreciation of the justice of his claim. Home had no strings 
at his heart, used as he was to those distant transactions. 
And these are the men who have their way with legislation, 
sooner or later, unless the angry clamor of all the presses and 
people be suddenly and authoritatively heard. . 

Again, I passed part of the evening at the house of one who 
is a Senator, and rich enough to keep a fine house here, as well as 
one in his own State. There were his pictures, his fresh silk 
furniture, the low grates in which the fire shone like one of 
the flaming great figures in his carpet afire ; and his wife was 



OPENING DAY. 497 

by to make it all look like real home — not Washington home. 
I marked how satisfiedly and reposedly his homeless visitors 
seemed to be in this goodly place, and it made me think that 
it would be a cheap, as well as magnanimous thing, for every 
Congressional District to secure for its Representative a home. 

Monday was, if possible, a meaner day than Sunday — snow- 
ing a sort of parboiled, still-born snow, — a snow that had no 
quality of itself but whiteness, and that not long. Through a 
rain as dishonest as the snow, and a wind that was merely 
atmospheric bad temper in motion, the slippery, shivering pro- 
cession of notabilities and sight-seekers took the only two streets 
that are traversed here, F street and Pennsylvania Avenue $ 
and dribbled along towards the Capitol. What comfort is like 
a horse-car's, particularly if you are impatient ? and so holding 
to a strap like grim death, you are set down at the foot of the 
Capitoline terraces, and in a few minutes have passed the 
leathern wickets set in the deep portal. Up through echo, and 
shadow, and carved places you go, up polished steps and under 
stained windows, until the clear, lucid light of the lobbies 
shows you all the many people walking, scraping, hob-nobbing, 
hurrying in there, and suddenly the doorkeepers at the chamber 
doors grow obdurate ; admittance to House or Senate is refused ; 
it is 12 o'clock, and simultaneously the Senate and House of 
Representatives enter upon the second session of the forty-first 
Congress. 

At the same moment the Supreme Court, after opening its 
regular term, is forming in body with its officers to pay a visit 
of honor to the President, and the President has already de- 
spatched his Secretary to Congress with his message. 

The entire Federal Government in all its Departments is, 
therefore, in motion ; and the good order, business prompti- 
tude, and the clear American republican simplicity with which 
the work was begun, was very impressive. It looked to be, 
and it was, genuine, popular government as perfectly realized 
as any man, not a Utopian, could expect. 

In the House of Representatives, precisely as the point of 

32 



HUMORS AND CLOUDS OF CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

the minute-hand overtook the hour-hand at noon, the Speaker, 
Blaine, dropped his gavel, and called upon the House to come 
to order. 

Immediately beneath him the Chaplain, Butler, raised his 
voice in such prayer as made the occasion reverent. Then the 
long roll was called over by the slim-bodied Clerk, McPherson, 
— and tolerably exhausting work it was — and the fine presence 
of the Speaker again arose to declare that there were sufficient 
members present to make business legal. 

At this junction the nation, as a business house, disappeared, 
and the two political parties who divide the country between 
them came with alacrity on the carpet. The blessing had 
been said, and the proprieties finished ; the knife and fork 
and regulated gluttony were in order. 

The House thereupon waited till half past 1 o'clock, when, 
after a crossing of duck-guns between Garfield and " Fernandy" 
Wood over some little matter, Captain Horace Porter, modest 
as a singed cat, moved up to that part of the house without 
existence, that goes by the fabulous name of "Bar," and 
presented the President's message in the original Eng- 
lish. 

It took an hour to read the President's message, and it was 
listened to, by some, with indolent interest, by many with 
attention. To show how the partisan feeling was the predom- 
inant one, it is only necessary to say that the portion referring 
to what side shall control the politics of Georgia was the only 
part applauded. 

In that message, thus rapidly read, the State and the needs 
of the nation were recited, and had there been moie character 
in the scene it would have been worth describing : the Chief 
Magistrate's panoramic view of his country unrolled before the 
Legislature. 

Due respect was paid to the message by handing it over to 
the printer, and then another patriotic confab occurred over 
the suspended Alabamians. Of course the Democratic side 



a delegate's power and position. 499 

was routed in a whiff,- and then four " Delegates " from Ter- 
ritories came up, bearing these singular names : 

Chaves, Cavanaugh, Nuckolls, and Pelucius Garfielde, with 
an e. Nuckolls looks to me like an hereditary case of bad 
spelling, but before Pelucius Garfielde with an e I fly, as before 
some antique statue. 

A Delegate is a sort of Congressional tadpole. He can 
swim and dive, but he cannot croak. He has no vote upon 
what he has been talking about. He says, " My voice is for 
war," but that is all of him that is. He is cruelly endowed 
by Congress with the power to put his nose into every question, 
but his hand nowhere. He disobeys his Bible every day, which 
says : " Let your conversation be yea ! yea ! and nay ! nay !" 
while, according to the rule of Congress, he has everything but 
a yea and nay. Besides, he is subjected to the indignity of 
being sworn in after the regular " members," like a negro 
Methodist, who is allowed to speak in class-meeting after the 
poor white trash have finished. This kind of second-hand 
Congressman I commiserate. He is like Shylock, invited to 
Bassanio's dinner : " To smell pork ; to eat of the habitation; 
to buy with them, sell with them, talk with them, walk with 
them, and so following ; but not to vote with them." 

Take another scene of note in the House of Representatives : 
the re-election of the Speaker at the beginning of a Congress : 

One Saturday, at 12 o'clock, while the fate of the offices of 
Admiral and Vice-Admiral were trembling in the balance of 
the yeas and nays, a wooden angel descended in the form of 
Speaker Blaine's gavel, and stirred up the waters, floating the 
Admiral to dry land. Immediately Speaker Blaine, consulting 
some memoranda under his table, cleared his throat, elevated 
his voice, and made a little speech to the Representatives 
of posterity, who had, meantime, all taken theii* seats to 
listen. 

The Speaker, who wears a blue coat, which, with his mili- 
tary statue, adds to his many graces the presumption that he 
once " fit into " some great war, and who is alert, as Colfax 



500 HUMORS AND CLOUDS OP CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

used to be, but with a manlier, wordlier sort of dash about 
him, is one of the Mark Antony school of orators. 

" A plain blunt man, 
That love my friend * * and only speak right on." 

Yet underneath, Blaine is impetuous without impetuosity, 
and the depths of him are as still as the Irish Sea. He makes 
no speeches which are not carefully pre-arranged, and inclines 
to the practical and sober ideal of manhood. Blaine has really 
a boyish nature, a spontaniety, and an excessiveness of health 
and good humor which are the main elements of his popularity 
amongst other politicians ; but while he is yet of less reputa- 
tion before the people than a dramatic use of his position might 
have obtained for him, he appears to be making very sure steps 
toward a renown of more longevity and reality than if he had 
gyrated by the way, attached himself to all the secret societies, 
and played the daisy in the public walk. 

The Speaker, as above described ; the galleries crowded 
thick and black, and the steam of their suspirations making 
them look thick and foggy ; the lobby doors showing through 
the glass how many hundreds were unable to enter for want 
of room ; the ladies' gallery, full of the wives of new members 
and of wondering constituents, in queer bonnets, who expected 
to see said members make a speech directly after roll-call ; the 
floor a decorous, compact mass of Representatives, every mem- 
ber of the new Congress in his place, and the retiring mem- 
bers, officers of the Executive Government, officers of the 
Supreme Court, Senators and privileged guests, standing 
behind in a half-circle, — to these, Mr. Blaine, in the pause 
after he had rapped with the gavel, made a speech, just long 
enough to give that dear, delightful flavor, to the occasion, so 
necessary to satisfy ladies and stranger constituents. He said, 
in short, that the Forty-first Congress had had its day ; that 
its record had passed into history, freedom, law, and the Con- 
gressional Globe; that it was composed .of generous members, 
and that the opposition was entitled to his gratitude, and so 



speaker blaine's speeches. 501 

forth, and so forth, a good deal like our old valedictory 
speeches at college, only more so, — this was the little speech of 
the Speaker of the House. When he had adjourned them with- 
out day, they all clapped hands, Ku-Klux and sentimentalists 
together, nobody observing William Mungen, whose public 
history is made up of a fiddle and his one minority vote refus- 
ing to endorse Blaine as a fair public officer ; and' it seemed 
for several minutes that the country was indeed safe, that the 
constitution had proved to be in less danger than was sup- 
posed, and that the eyes of Europe and Delaware had not 
gazed upon us in vain. 

At the end of the ' speech the House and the Chair half 
emptied themselves, and the Speaker, it was ascertained by 
my diligent assistant,' stepped into the smoking-room and 
lighted a cigar, and between the whiffs perused that other un- 
expected speech he was to make within ten minutes before the 
next Congress. I request you, unless it be absolutely essential 
to the completeness of this chapter, to make, on no account, any 
reference to the fact that the second speech was already pre- 
pared. The American patriot would lose faith in his institu- 
tions should he suppose that the third officer in the Goverment 
could deliberately prepare a speech for an occasion altogether 
spontaneous. The patriot's notion has been immemorially 
fixed that, whatever is done by design is contrary to his ear- 
liest lessons as derived from his parents and his school-books. 
To him Washington rides forth to save the country from an 
original impulse, mounted upon a fortuitous war-horse, acci- 
dentally saddled, and fights a battle upon an unpremeditated 
site, inditing his victorious despatches in the very pitch of the 
action. To him, Messrs. Webster and Hayne, hearing some 
incidental references to their respective States, rise peremp- 
torily up from the profound contemplation of their country and 
thrill all the school-readers and good citizens in the land. To 
him, Mr. Blaine must be spontaneous or nothing, gushing or 
fraudulent. It will not, therefore, be perhaps proper to print 
anything intimating that Mr. Blaine was duly nominated by 



502 HUMORS AND CLOUDS OF CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

caucus two or three nights before, that his speeches, both to 
commemorate his retirement .from one Congress and to con- 
gratulate himself on his promotion in the other, were all cut 
and dried, and that the last minutiae were prepared, including 
the designation of those who were to nominate and second him, 
the tellers who were to pass upon the election, and the member 
who was to administer the oath. 

While Mr. Blaine is in the smoking-room, the Clerk of the 
House, McPherson, a slim, quiet, sandy-haired gentleman, 
once a Congressman, and always both an editor and a politi- 
cian, is reading the roll of the members-elect of the Forty- 
.second Congress. Even this adherence to law had passed 
under the party spectacles, the dominant organization ready to 
take advantage of any irregularity or dispute, but, fortunately, 
no such collision had occurred as had marked the morning 
session of the Congress just defunct, when, on some sly propo- 
sition of Mr. Dawes, to change the rules of the House for the 
disadvantage of the increased Democratic representation in the 
next Congress — a dodge determined upon in one caucus, and 
detected within five minutes in the other caucus — an almost 
demoniac scene ensued, James Brooks brandishing his um- 
brella as if it were a blazing torch, and not an article of ging- 
ham, and Mr. Eldridge crying in a loud voice wha^ was ascer- 
tained to be the word " Revolution," but which some inter- 
preted, from his hungry, not to say ravenous, manner to be the 
word " Hash." 

During the roll-call of the new Congress, I noticed the grim 
way in which the fresh ex-members looked upon the newly 
elected strangers already snugly ensconced in their old seats. 
There, also, in the outer circle, the advocates of defeated bills 
looked on the smart legislative scene with countenances of 
defeat and melancholy. Many a wife lost her trip to Europe 
this summer by the failing of some measure advocated with all 
dauntless energy by the husband in the lobby. Many a little 
home, perhaps, which, for two years, had been within the per- 
spective, almost within the grasp of some defeated claimant, 



ELECTING THE SPEAKER. 503 

now passed out of sight forever. Many a gorgeous imperial 
dream of some deep mind, to be developed through government 
aid, some line of steamships to be launched, some railway to 
be endowed with bonds and land, was broken by the sharp 
gavel which struck the conclusion of the old Congress. And 
there they were, the broken hearts of the lobby, — members, 
after all, of our common humanity, and at their firesides as 
beloved as the noblest, — looking in upon the arena with dim 
eyes shining in their working faces, and all the vividness of a' 
new and less illusive future etching, its hard outlines into their 
souls. 

The clerk, who was, for the time being, the supreme author- 
ity of the House of Representatives, passed some running crit- 
icism upon the semi-legal form of many of the returns, and 
there was a little sparring between the two vigilant parties, 
which watched the, motions of each other from the opposite 
sides of the House. When it was all done,, nominations were 
in order for permanent officers of the new Congress, and at 
once Austin Blair arose. Why did Austin Blair, in particular, 
arise ? He was a slim, thin, not very healthy-looking person, 
and with a voice not remarkably sonorous, and yet not a man on 
the Republican side hastened to be in the advance and say what 
Austin Blair, in a very nonchalant and uninterrupted way, said 
at his personal leisure : 

" I nominate James G. Blaine, of Maine." 

The explanation is, that Austin Blair was President of the 
Republican caucus, a body known only in the customs of parties, 
but as entirely unknown to law as is the Ku-Klux clan to the 
laws of Georgia, or the Skull and Cross-Bones Society to the 
Faculty of Yale College. 

In the same ministerial, legatory way, Fernando Wood, 
President of the Democratic caucus, rose on the opposite side, 
amidst general silence, and, using the name of the Democratic 
party, proposed George W. Morgan, of Ohio. 

When it was all done, Morgan and Poland of Yermont, at 
the order of the clerk, went out in a very unpremeditated way 



504 HUMORS AND CLOUDS OF CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

to discover Mr. Blaine. There was great anxiety in the gal- 
lery amongst the constituents for fear Mr. Blaine might have 
lost himself. Apprehensions were entertained that he had 
strolled off some considerable distance with his little boy, missed 
the high honor of a re-election, of which he could have had no 
suspicion whatever, and brought to a full stop these United 
States. The Committee, however, by the merest accident, 
found Mr. Blaine somewhat in the posture of Cincinnatus at the 
plow, reposing in the adjacent smoking-room ; they prevailed 
upon him to hearken to the inexorable call of his country. He 
took one glimpse of the little speech, seized the soldier of Chepul- 
tepec by one arm, and Mr. Poland, who appeared, by his buff 
vest and blue coat to be a soldier of the Revolution, by the 
other arm, and he walked up the middle aisle of the House 
with that expression of resignation suitable to one to whom 
public life is distasteful, and the highest happiness to be found 
only on the banks of the Moosemagunticook, or in the hermitages 
of Skowhegan. He ascended the chair ; he struck the desk 
with his gavel, and he made an extemporaneous speech, better, 
if possible, than the shorter one with which he had dismissed 
the old Congress. It was greeted with clapping of hands, and 
it endorsed all the sentiments of the hour. He recognized the 
necessity of an opposition, and believed in party lines. He in- 
timated that the present opposition was big enough to compel 
justice, and said that he himself was a partisan. In short, 
this happy speech contained no extracts whatever from the 
Farewell Address of Washington, which antiquated document 
decried the baneful influence of party spirit, while this superb 
enunciation was devoted to recognizing parties as indispensable 
and politicians as paramount. The House knew this to be the 
fact, and the slapping of hands was very hearty. All the old 
officers of the House were re-elected, and thus, forty-one times 
repeated, the Congress of the United States, which began its 
existence eighty-two years ago, was organized in as decent a 
method as is possible in modern States, with every appearance 
of loyalty and law cheerfully rendered, and with one of the 



A LOOK AT THE CAUCUS. 505 

handsomest Speakers it has ever permitted itself to keep round 
the House. 

I shall have no time to describe the President, in that rich 
and gaudy room in the Capitol devoted to his use, and occupied 
by him only a few minutes each year, signing bills as fast as 
they were presented, and besought meantime by a crowd of 
people, fearful that their particular bills might be left over ; the 
savory lunches, and liquors, dispensed the night before in the 
committee rooms ; or the incidents in the long night session in 
the Senate, when work laid by at the proper hour had accumu- 
lated and had to be pushed along, even at the loss of sleep. 
On the whole, the old Congress retired, and the new one took 
its place, with every evidence of the fact that the Federal Gov- 
ernment still commands the deepest interest of all, and that 
the State is in no danger of expiring by neglect. 

But now let us take a look at the Caucus itself, — say the 
Senatorial Caucus. 

The Republican caucus is a sort of Council of Ten under 
the Council of Thirty — an irresponsible and unrecognized mas- 
ter of the Senate. It meets by private and written notification, 
in the marble-room or in the reception room in the rear of the 
President of the Senate, and determines upon the policy which 
the party shall pursue upon any measure. 

Whoever goes into caucus must abide by its verdict or be 
dishonored, like the man who gambles and then must pay up, 
though it be plucking bread from the mouths of his wife and 
children. He must obey the party behest, conscience or no 
conscience. And hence, oh ! poor patriot who dwellest afar, 
and once in a lifetime comes to Washington city and listens to 
the whole of a debate, supposing, in all thy simplicity, that the 
Senators listen to the argument and vote as they are affected. 
Go to ! The debate is nothing ; the caucus has often fixed it all 
beforehand. This it is to have exclusive party government. 

Through our State legislatures and in the House of Repre- 
sentatives the caucus system is maintained, generally on party 
occasions, but liable to abuse. The Southern Republicans or 



503 HUMORS AND CLOUDS OF CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

carpet-baggers have gone into a separate caucus as a sectional 
wing of a party, a thing which the Southern secession Demo- 
crats never did before the war, and in this way they once 
defeated Judge Hoar for Attorney-General. Caucus of this 
kind is nothing but conspiracy to manipulate the legislature 
and the State. 

Suppose a member or a Senator bolts caucus ; what are the 
consequences ? He forfeits his right to meet in the private 
sessions of his party again, and one might as well be in limbo 
now-a-days as in no party. A Senator from Missouri a few years 
ago urged amnesty and Republican government in that State ; 
the immediate faction which controlled the Executive deter 
mined against him ; he persisted, and the offices filled by his 
friends were all vacated ; he returned to the Capital ; the 
magistrate who was willing to receive courteously folks of the 
Democratic party would not admit his fellow-soldier and co- 
partisan ; his colleagues in Congress who had acted with him 
were also cut from the list of the faithful and their brothers- 
in-law disturbed in their snug post-offices. Thus it happens 
that party defection to the majority makes one more homeless 
than to be in the minority. 

The party-power is a terrible mystery in this Democratic 
country, and none feel it but those in public life. It has a 
national committee with a presiding secretary sitting in the 
Capitol edifice. Thence assessments are ordered for election 
purposes upon all the office-holders at will, ten per cent, being 
no unusual levy. The New York custom-house alone yields 
for party purposes in this way annually tens of thousands to 
control elections in far-off States. A late member of the Cabi- 
net rebuked this system, and he was remitted to private life. 

I witnessed the whole of one grand movement of a great 
party upon a refractory chieftain in the impeachment and trial 
. of President Johnson, and it was a more terrible scene than 
the trial of Judas Iscariot might be before the College of Cardi- 
nals. A master punishing his slave could have proceeded with 
no more deliberate and conscientious zeal. Not one person of 



THE IMPEACHMENT OF JOHNSOJT. 507 

the opposite party countenanced this movement. It was purely 
within the political organization which had nominated the 
offender, and while the opposite party opposed it on party 
grounds, even they appeared to think it a defensible measure. 

I had generally been a Republican, though a protesting one 
in cases where citizen rights were unnecessarily invaded ; and 
as it had appeared to me that President Johnson was a barrier 
against the settlement of the Southern question, I believed that 
on the whole, he ought to be set aside. 

But, when I arrived at the Capital, I found that nobody, ex- 
cept, perhaps, Mr. Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, was excited 
over Johnson's " policy," as he called it. It was his abuse of 
the party patronage which was the unforgiven sin. He had 
disobeyed an act of Congress, of doubtful validity, taking away 
from him the power to make ad-interim. appointments, or those 
made between sessions of Congress. This was a challenge to 
every member of Congress in the regular caucus ranks that off 
might come the heads of his post-master, his revenue officials, 
his clerks, and his brothers-in-law. As I did not care for any- 
body's brother-in-law, or any clerk, or any post-master, and 
knew that in many cases Johnson could make no worse appoint- 
ments than were made, I began to have objections to defacing 
the gallery of chief magistrates and confirming a huge histori- 
cal scandal for any such customary piece of tyranny. As the 
Republican Congress had refused to give us a decent and per- 
manent civil service, though backed up by every good Republi- 
can in the land, I saw no special right they had to make a 
transient civil service for their own uses, and say that their 
President should not be as unjust a ruffian as they. I said 
this, and was at once kicked out of the party. This gave me 
no concern. I had been kicked on paper a good many times, 
and, as the king of Italy remarked, " an excommunication 
could excite no terror in a man already certain to go to hell." 
So I said to a very amiable and able Senator : 

" What is the use of this trial * You have simply fallen 
into your own snare. You nominated Mr. Johnson at Balti- 
more, and must take your misfortune with philosophy." 



508 HUMORS AND CLOUDS OF CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

*. 

" Oh," said he, "had he been elected by the other party we 
shouldn't have impeached him. We have a right to impeach 
our own President, because he is a renegade, and a party rene- 
gade is also a renegade to his country." 

" God help us !" I said. " Then we shall have but one party 
in this country, if nobody can go out of it. The Vice-President 
whom you chose prior to Johnson, Mr. Hamlin, left the Demo- 
cratic party to come to ours. Besides, how can you hold these 
views and sit in that jury of impeachment, sworn to impartial 
justice ?" 

" Oh," he replied, " you can't construct a Senate of politi- 
cians into a court." 

I sat there, during all those long gala weeks, and saw this 
caucus jury sit upon the term of a President, elected by the 
direct electors of the people.. I saw the anxiety of every 
member of the House to make a speech on the subject. I saw 
the picked members of Congress borne down in dignity, learn- 
ing, and eloquence by the attorneys of the people, some of 
whom we had never heard of by name. As the trial drew near 
its end, and it was manifest that Congress had not. made a case 
before the Senate, I heard the low, awful mutter of baffled 
placemen, saying, " Who cannot perjure himself in that Sen- 
ate must perish." ' I saw the great party newspapers, like the 
Missouri Democrat, which afterward leaped widest from the party 
track, come down from their towers and gate-ways amongst 
the politicians, and cry, " Right or wrong, he who cannot vote 
for Mr. Johnson's conviction may as well understand that his 
public life is done." 

And, amidst that howl and hiss of faction, the like of which 
I never beheld on any battle-field of the war— for it was the 
battle of the camp-followers — I saw the doomed seven stand 
in the focus of hate, and say the calm, judicial words, not 
guilty. 

Perquisites is another queer feature of loose Congressional 
life. Let me give an illustration from a public officer's lips. 



OFFICIAL PERQUISITES. - 509 

While I was raking over some of the old documents in the 
crypt one day the chief doorkeeper of the House, Buxton, came 
in. He told me that he had about one hundred persons in his 
employment, of whom the greater number worked in the 
Folding-Room, which lies in the vaults of the Capitol. There 
the documents of a durable character, which are printed and 
bound in immense quantities for distribution amongst the con- 
stituents of the members, are folded and counted by 70 or 80 
boys and men, working on time or by the hundred. Adjacent 
to the place for folding are great rooms under the foundations 
of the Capitol, which are often packed to the ceiling with 
books. Some time ago a number of Southern members of 
Congress wanted to distribute copies of the Agricultural Report, 
&c, amongst their people, who, according to Mr. Buxton, were 
" hungry for government reading," having been deprived of it 
for seven or eight years, because, when the llebel Representa- 
tives left the Capitol, they forfeited their books. 

Here is something omitted in all the histories of the Rebel- 
lion. Amongst its terrible consequences was the loss of the 
Patent-Ofhce Reports by the rebellious people, and such other 
sweet delusive compositions. They got at one room, in which 
it was believed about 3,000 Agricultural Reports were stowed 
away. 

" And would you believe it ?" said Mr. Buxton, " so decep- 
tive was that little alcove that we got 10,000 Agriculturals out 
of there." 

" What is the greatest number of copies of any one book 
printed, Mr. Buxton ?" 

" Well, sir, the Agriculturals ! About 670 copies of them 
go to each member. That seems very big don't it ? But, bless 
you, they don't make a show in some districts. In some of 
the agricultural districts of Texas, for example, there are 23 
counties. What can a Representative accomplish in such dis- 
tricts with 670 copies ? There have been as high as 75Q copies 
per member of some books struck off." 



510 HUMORS AND CLOUDS OF CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

" How many departments come under your charge, Mr. 
Buxton ?" 

" Well, sir, I appoint the Pages, the Doorkeepers, the clerks 
of the Document-room, and the hands in the Folding-Room." 

" Your's must be the best position here, is it not so ?" 

" Oh, no ! I think the best office is SergeamVat-Arms of 
the House. He has the appointing of more than half of the 
police, and the amount of money which passes through his 
hands to pay witnesses, members, etc., makes the place quite 
lucrative. There was some excitement about the amount of his 
fees during the last Congress. Instead of giving him 10 cents 
a mile as formerly, he was restricted to the necessary expenses. 
In my judgment, the change was in the interest of the Ser- 
geant-at-Arms ; for, in the South, 10 cents a mile will not pay 
messenger's expenses, whereas now the Sergeant-at-Arms can 
make a contract with a man to go 5 to New Orleans or Texas, 
and that must be settled for under the definition of expenses." 

There is scarcely one of these utility departments under the 
Government which does not merit curious inquiry and yield 
instruction. Very often a document which has been exhausted, 
and the type distributed, must be entirely reset to serve some 
subsequent purpose. The Commissioner of the late Census 
found himself under the necessity of using about 200 printed 
copies of the Census of 1860. He applied to Mr. Buxton for 
them, and said it was absolutely necessary that they should be 
had. The Chief Doorkeeper found that he was keeping for 
dead or departed members a sufficient excess of all the volumes 
of the Census to give the Commissioner 250 full sets. At the 
same time, so jealous are Congressmen of their property in 
public documents that frequently, when there are thousands of 
books lying in the vaults, not a single copy can be spared to 
satisfy a new member, all being accredited to members of for- 
mer Congresses, who have left these books on free storage and 
design to recover them. " Mr. Elihu Washburne, for example, 
has 40 boxes, of the more valuable class of public documents 
now under the Capitol. They are safe from fire, and they cost 
nothing to take care of them in this vast depository. 



ABUSES OF THE FRANKING PRIVILEGE. 6il 

" A member often comes to me who wants some book," 
said Mr. Buxton, " and I tell him none are to be had of that 
kind, and then he goes down into the vaults and sees thou- 
sands of the same book lying around, and thinks me very dis- 
obliging. I am merely keeping the quotum for absent people." 

Said I, " Mr. Buxton, when one man receives 650 copies 
of a single book, does it not strike you that the franking priv- 
ilege is an imposition ?" 

" Why, my dear sir, the abolition of the franking privilege 
will do no good, as long as you print so much. The Govern- 
ment's contracts with the railroads cover an indefinite amount, 
and the matter of transportation is nothing after you have 
struck off so many volumes. If there is any error in the busi- 
ness, it is in printing so much. But the railroads can charge 
>no more for carrying one thousand tons than for twenty tons. 
At the close of the last Congress, we sent down to the Balti- 
more and Ohio depot several thousand bags of books, and 
choked up the mail cars and baggage cars. The railroad 
officials cried out against it, and said they wouldn't carry off so 
much mere freight, disguised as mail matter. Said we : ' Yes 
you must. Your contract calls for you to take away just what 
we send. We want these books off our hands, and want the 
space here for other work ;' and they had to take them as fast 
as we sent them, although it added very much to the length of 
their daily trains. Some of the books published here really 
make enormous piles. Look at the Ku-Klux Report. There 
you have thirteen volumes bound in black cloth, and filling 
nearly as much space as Appleton's Cyclopaedia. When we 
begin to bag up those books and send them off under the mem- 
bers' franks, it is a lively scene around the depot, down there." 

" Mr. Buxton, I observe that each member of Congress has 
a box with his name printed upon it. Do those boxes go as 
mail matter ?" 

" No, sir ; those boxes have to go as express-matter, and be 
paid for ; but, then, a majority of the members of Congress 
have express-passes presented to them, which covers everything 



512 HUMORS AND CLOUDS OF CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

in the Lord's name which they choose to send home. A 
Congressman is deadheaded on telegraph wires, freight cars, 
and in passenger cars. He very seldom pays gas-bills or taxes. 
Those boxes are used by many of the members as being 
more secure and more easil/ handled than a trunk. Each 
member has three boxes. As they are strongly made and pro- 
vided with a powerful lock, they cost about five dollars a piece. 
Two of these boxes are designed to carry documents, and the 
third is intended to transport flower-pots, plants, shrubs, bo- 
quets, &c, from the Congressional Public Gardens.*' 

It was at such perquisites as the above that the repeal of the 
franking privilege was directed. 

But let us go further and call your attention to a form of 
extravagance which approaches in audacity, as well as vorac- 
ity, the river and harbor grabs. 

This may be called the abuse of national house-building, 
which is now reduced to a science here, and is provided with 
all the modern conveniences and encouragements of a spe- 
cial bureau. 

When a new Congressman comes to be chosen., the people 
are apt to crowd about him and say : 

" Mr. Snipps, we want' an improvement down in Tippecanoe. 
We haven't had a new house put up these twenty years. A poor 
house is very badly needed, but as the United States Govern-^ 
nient won't build that for us, we should like to have a custom 
house, post-office, mint, assay office, marine hospital, or quar- 
antine. Your colleague, Jobbs, over in the Bumblebee Dis- 
trict, got seven custom houses for his people last year. One 
of them at Pokeville cost half a million, though they only 
asked forty thousand dollars to begin with, and now they are 
holding a revival meeting in it alternate nights with a euchre 
club. Such an idea would be a great moral improvement for 
Tippecanoe." 

Congressman Snipps, who is a new-comer to Washington, 
feels resolved to do all he can for the people of Tippecanoe ; for' 
tile Congressman, like many great philosophers, supposes that 



ONE WAY OF BLEEDING THE COUNTRY. 513 

if you can get several millions of money from somewhere else 
to build what you don't want, the value of our Republican in- 
stitutions will increase in proportion. Some half dozen other 
towns in Snipps' district would also like improvements at the 
national expense, and Snipps, as he approaches Washington, 
is siezed, perhaps, with some forebodings of the difficulty of 
getting any appropriation at all. 

But Snipps' fears are without foundation. In the United 
States Treasury he will find a most accommodating gentleman, 
by the name of Mullett, whose special business it is to facil- 
itate bashful members in the art of house-building. 

Mr. Mullett goes by the title of Supervising Architect of the 
Treasury. He is a slender, wiry, anxious-looking gentleman, 
a professional architect, and possessed with»a vaster ambition 
and a vaster field than Michel Angelo. Inigo Jones, his 
great prototype, was no more than a mound-builder to him, for 
Mr. Mullett is the absolute architectural controller of more 
than two hundred buildings, costing from $25,000 to nearly 
17,000,000 apiece, and when Snipps approaches him to make 
some faint application for counsel and suggestion, Mr. Mullett 
explains his prerogatives in the language of his yearly report : 

" As the duties of this office are not generally understood, I 
have thought it desirable, Mr. Snipps, to give the following 
brief synopsis of them : They now embrace the purchase, sale 
and supervision of all real estate belonging to, or under the 
custody of the Treasury Department, excepting lighthouse 
property. The preparation of designs, estimates, and specifi- 
cations for buildings ; the supervision of their construction ; 
the repairs and improvement, the furnishing, lighting, and 
heating of those already completed ; and the construction and 
supply of all vaults and safes used by the Department." 

Mr. Mullett's office is magnificently emblazoned with car- 
toons of innumerable structures which he supervises, and in 
the adjacent rooms two score of draughtsmen are designing, 
planning, and improving for the benefit of such rural constit- 
uents as those of Snipps. Snipps sees all through it in a min- 
33 



514 HUMORS AND CLOUDS OF CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 

ute. He sees that he is asking for nothing out of the way. 
He perceives that everybody, in fact, has asked before him. 
Taking one wide, wild survey of the magnificent pagodas, tem- 
ples, arcades, mausoleums, palaces, and coliseums, around him, 
he cries : 

" I see ! You are " 

" I am !" 

" Mullett ?" 

" Tis he !" 

As they are in the act of embracing, perhaps, the spacious 
doors of the grand chamber swing wide, and the Congressman 
of many terms, Redeyefer, of the Bucks District, steps in with 
a business stride. 

" I want a house or two put up in my destreek," he says, 
" the people of Fodderton lost the only available barn in the 
place, for temperance meetings, and now they want me to get 
them something on the toploftical order. Grub City wants a 
Custom House, as the Collector there says he could see a sail 
once or twice a quarter, if he had a high house to climb onto. 
Goodyear would like a quarantine, as the people are well down 
with the fevernager, and they think that something of a Post- 
Office,onthe Gothic or Assyrian, might encourage the onhappy 
youth there to learn how-to read and write. As for cipherin, 
they're the best constituency in the world." 

A deputy architect takes both gentlemen through the spaci- 
ous gallery of art. Mr. Redeyefer looks over the illuminated 
architectures, like Mr. Legree buying a darkey in the market. 
Mr. Snipps, newer, resembles a rural gentleman selecting the 
kind of photograph he might like. 

Says Mr. Redeyefer : 

" What kind o' thing is the Vatican ? One of my constitu- 
ents hez a daughter who has been all over Europe, France, and 
other countries, and she says the Vatican flattens 'em all out. 
It would be a kind of delicate compliment to her, you see, — 
and her father votes our ticket straight every time ! — to build 
the Vatican in Grub City." 



ONE WAY OF BLEEDING THE COUNTRY. 515 

" The preacher in Tippecanoe," adds Mr. Snipps, " says 
that Solomon's Temple is the properest form of idee for our 
Post-Office. That, or the Sphinx." 

" Oh ! sho !" exclaims Redeyefer, " that air Sphinx was on 
the Asiatic order - of arshytecter — a sort of Corinthian, you 
know ! What you want is an edifice more abstruse for a Post- 
Office : the Pizanthian or the Mansard !" 

Immediately Snipps runs off and consorts with him twenty 
other Congressmen more desperate than himself, all bent upon 
having a new house built in some close-voting section of the 
district. Or, perhaps, some one influential constituent has a 
corner lot which he has saved up in the heart of his town, to 
the detriment of its growth, paying taxes with dogged avarice, 
in anticipation of selling the same to the Government for a 
costly edifice which shall improve the real estate lying round 
about it. These twenty Congressmen resolve to join in witli 
any clique, ring, tariff, or river-and-harbor set, which will ex- 
change votes with them, and the obliging Architect of the 
Treasury, proud of his art and the exercise of it, has no mind 
to discourage anybody who wants a fine edifice set up with 
these words beautifully engraved over the portal : " A. B. 
Mullett, Architect." 



CHAPTEE XXXII. 



A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

I have neglected to sketch a familiar character around 
Washington who has of late kept his head under cover, by 
whom I mean " The Striker," the man who hears of a claim, 
grant, or bill of value, about to pass Congress, and who opposes 
it in order to be bought up. » 

Let me take, as a familiar case, the passage of the appropri- 
ation of seven millions of dollars to buy Alaska, pursuant to 
treaty. There was some opposition to the bill because Mr. 
Seward, who asked for the money, as Secretary of State, was 
not on good terms with his party at the time ; therefore the 
Russian Government employed Robe/t T.Walker and Frederick 
P. Stanton, Attorneys-at-Law, to move in the interests of the 
appropriation. 

It is a commentary upon what sort of a whispering gallery 
Washington is, that no sooner had Walker been retained than 
some eavesdropper found it out. Mr. Stanton says that in July 
of last year, while the appropriation was pending, a person 
named Painter came up to him and said that to his (Painter's) 
knowledge Mr. Walker had received a large amount of money 
to secure the passage of this appropriation. 

" Now," said Painter, " I have some friends in Congress — 
not to mention my two newspapers, both daily — who are 
opposed to this appropriation. But if Mr. Walker will retain 
me, I will be able to influence them to vote for it. What are 
your terms with Mr. Walker ?" 

(516) 



THE MAN WHO RUSHES BILLS THROUGH CONGRESS. 517 

" Quite intimate !•" said Stanton. 

" Then I wish you would see him, and ask him to employ 
me!" 

Mr. Stanton says that he had a wholesome knowledge of the 
power of certain newspaper folks to mar anything, and he, 
therefore, in the interests of his clients, saw Walker at once. 
Mr. Walker replied in strong terms that he would bribe, pur- 
chase, or conciliate no man, and this answer, softened and 
emasculated, Stanton returned to Painter. The latter was not 
appeased, and he again sent to Mr. Stanton a person named 
Latham, and Mr. Stanton, anxious to keep the peace, so 
fully satisfied Latham that there was no money in the case ex 
cept a lawyer's fee, that Latham professed to be convinced. 
The appropriation was finally passed by the House, General 
Banks being its champion. Soon after the adjournment 6f 
Congress, Painter came again to Stanton and said : 

" Have you heard that Robert J. Walker was robbed night 
before last in New York V* 

"Yes." 

" Well, I know all about it. He had his pocket filled with 
five thousand dollar notes, and was on his way to the Fifth 
Averiue Hotel to divide them amongst the members who voted 
for the appropriation." 

" I do not believe anything of this^" said Mr. Stanton. You 
are mistaken about it, Painter. No money has been paid for 
anybody's vote." 

"I know all about it," said Painter; " the money was passed 
through Rigg's bank, in denominations of five thousand dollars, 
and I am going to have an Investigating Committee called to 
look into it. I must be let in or I'll bust it ! " 

This, stated with positiveness, alarmed Stanton, who believed 
that there *must be some conspiracy or underplotting that he 
had not been informed of. The papers were already filled with 
allegations and inuendoes on this matter, and Mr. Stanton, 
feeling that his character might be called into question, has- 
tened to speak to Mr. Walker again. Walker was also niys- 



518 A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

tified and alarmed, and he exclaimed that " Before God, he 
knew nothing of any such bribery of members of Congress ! " 

The newspaper charges continuing, the threats of an investi- 
gation being multiplied, and Latham still coming round with 
" feelers," Mr. Stanton at last brought himself, unwillingly, 
down to a conviction that he had met a cardinal case of per- 
sonal baseness, and that all these charges and publications 
were parts of an original scheme to extort money from him- 
self and Robert J. Walker. Therefore, when he again met 
Painter, some days afterward, he said: ■ 

" Well, Mr. Painter, did you defeat the Russian appropri- 
ation, as you threatened, sir ? " 

" No'," said Painter, " but I was lied to about the money. 
Instead of there being merely a lawyer's fee in the case, there 
was a big pile distributed, and I'm going to get even with the 
people who lied to me. I shall have an Investigating Commit- 
tee on it." 

" I assure you, Mr. Painter," said Stanton, " that your mo- 
tives are understood, and whatever be the issue of these attacks 
you have made upon our characters, yours will be revealed to 
the public to your sorrow." 

Then Latham came round again with a " feeler," and so did 
others, saying that Painter regarded his conversations with Mr. 
Stanton as private interviews, and if Stanton exposed him he 
would " break him up." The Alaska Investigation Committee 
was meantime formed, and it was too late for the authors of it 
to escape the falling of their own trap. Mr. Stanton says that 
he suspected from the manner of putting questions, and ruling 
out evidence, that there was a mysterious somebody to be 
shielded, if possible. When he had testified, Nemesis was 
swift to send his evidence round the country, and as promptly 
came Mr. Painter's denial either that there was a word of 
truth in what had been "testified, or that any such testimony 
had been given. Mr. Stanton in the interests of the public 
conscience, prepared at once to confirm and reiterate his tes- 
timony, resolved to test the limit of mendacity in controlling 



THE STRIKER. 519 

the press and a committee of Congress. Immediately Latham 
turned up, begging Mr. Stanton to be quiet ; for, said Latham, 

" Painter has not denied a word of your testimony. He 
admitted to me that it was all true, and cried over his predic- 
ament." 

Nevertheless, Mr. Stanton wrote out some questions, which 
he wished the committee to put to Latham, to settle the issue 
of veracity. When Mr. Stanton went to enter the room of 
this committee he found Painter blocking up the door. The 
latter took Mr. Stanton aside and said : 

" I never denied the statements you made, Mr. Stanton. It 
is my enemies who have circulated these despatches, making 
the denial to prejudice me with you." 

He began to blubber, and Stanton was so touched that he 
was on the point of withdrawing the paper he had brought. 

Judge of Mr. Stanton's indignation when, the same after- 
noon, he saw the original despatches ; deadheaded in Painter's 
number, which had been sent to New York papers over the 
Western Union wires. 

Mr. Stanton then gave up that he had come to an extraor- 
dinary condition of man ! 

I asked Mr. Stanton if he had been molested since by any- 
body in Painter's interest. .He said that he had observed Mr. 
Congressman John Covode, to have ceased to speak to him, 
(Stanton,) and that he had received intimations from several 
members, and at least two Senators, saying that they would 
regard it as a personal favor if he (Stanton) would withdraw 
his testimony before the committee, so as to give the committee 
a chance to report without using Mr. Painter's name. 

This is Mr. Stanton's statement as I have noted it down, 
excepting and adding nothing. It is undoubtedly a just state- 
ment. It shows that all this expense and scandal about Alaska, 
which will probably cost the government five or six thousand 
dollars to pay the committee and Sergeant-at-Arms and print 
the report, was contrived by one person to get a hand in a 
supposed job ! 



520 A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

j The following verses illustrate the above kind of characters 
THE, STRIKER. 

Slouched, and surly, and sallow-faced, 
With a look as if something were sore misplaced, 
The young man Striker was seen to stride 
Up the Capital stairs at high noontide, 
And as though at the head of a viewless mot) — 
Who could look in his eye and mistrust it ? — ■ 
He quoth : " They must let me into that job, 
Or I'll bust it ! " 

What it was that troubled him so 
How shall we innocent visitors know? 
Perhaps a scheme of subsidy great, 
Or perhaps a mightier project of state ; 
A plot, perhaps, some widow to rob — 
Whatever, whoever discussed it, 
Unless Mr. Striker was " let in the job," 1 ] 
He would " bust it." 

Wonderful youth ! such power to keep 
In a land where Justice ne'er is asleep ; 
To stagger the councils of state with fear, . 
Or stop the growth ol a hemisphere ; 
The time-piece of law to crush in the fob, 
Or by violence re-adjust it, 
And, lest he be "let" into this or that job, 
He can " bust it;" 

Striker ! in thee no species rare 
We see ascending the Capitol stair. 
All the ages and States of eld 
Some similar hound or highwayman held ; 
Some Herod, who 'ere Heaven's babe might throb, 
In the cradle would strangle or thrust it, 
And, unless he were "let in" the holiest "job," 
He would " bust it." 

Another plan of strikers, eavesdroppers, and people reckless 
and mean in the enjoyment of power, is to start investigations, 
in order to compel revelations useful to themselves. The 
worst instance of this was the seizure of telegrams at the close 
of the Impeachment trial. 



HOW GEN. BUTLER MANAGES CASES. '521 

To imagine a genuine case of happiness, as a telegraph 
operator relates it, you must see General Butler let loose upon 
several barrels of telegrams. He is all activity. He has 
blank subpcenas, and sends for folks by the wholesale. Being 
himself familiar "with speculations, his inquisitiveness is whet- 
ted to the sharpest edge. He penetrates all their aliases. 
Coming to the following despatch he feels that he has struck 
a live mystery : 

" Pete, sell ! Go one straight ! Raw egg ! Charge to my 
account. Ditto this end. (Signed) Looney." 

"Now," says General Butler, " answer me, why do you sign 
yourself ' Looney ?•' " 

" I don't sign myself ' Looney ' " 

" Ha ! Sirrah ! Look there !" says the General. " Spell 
that ! What is it ? Quick !" 

"Why," says the man, "that ain't Looney; it's J. W. 
Ney." 

" Silence !" says General Butler," I know you, sirrah ! I 
know you !" 

After considerable ciphering, the General proceeds : 

" Now, Looney, who is Pete ?" 

" Pete Hurley, my pardner ! All that is said here is : 
' Pete Hurley, sell out my account and take a drink,' just as I 
am doing at this end." 

" But what is this about raw eggs ? Why eggs ? Answer 
on your oath, why eggs ?" 

" Eggs and sherry !" says Looney promptly. I wonder you 
don't keep 'em here !" 

Stand by. 

" Sergeant-at-Arms," says the General, " answer, Looney, 
on your oath ! Where did you get the margin to put up, and 
how much did you buy ?" 

The General then, by successive references to the Sergeant- 
at-Arms and stern interlocutions, gets to the bottom of this 
incendiary matter, which Looney only •wished to conceal 



522 ' A TILT AT SOME OF THE GBEAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

because his transactions had been so ridiculous that he was 
ashamed of them. 

And the telegraph, in our day is trusted and sacred as the 
mails, bearing its private burden of grief, sudden poverty, the 
shame of one's daughter, the folly of one's wife, has been 
for nearly two weeks in the custody of a man with boundless 
inquisitiveness and fearful memory. 

What is the defence of the General, when twitted with 
this : 

" The English Government," he said, " seized even the mails 
at the time of the Chartist riots." 

Perhaps so ! but that was the desperate device of a Tory 
ministry, to retard the suffrage, and this was an inquest to 
remove a President who stands in the way of universal suf- 
frage. Altogether this Impeachment trial has shown surpris- 
ing morals in New York and Washington — a President's 
drunken speeches, a guano job, a whiskey ring, wholesale seiz- 
ure of telegrams, copious use of spies, and the manners of 
General Butler. 

The abuse of special legislation is as true of Congress as of 
the State Legislatures. In the latter the hawking of charters 
passed to sell is a well-known practice, particularly in Penn- 
sylvania. 

I was told, in one of the greatest railway offices of this 
country, that the Stanhope charter, so called, which was ob- 
tained from the New Jersey Legislature by the piecemeal soli- 
citation of small turnpike and milling licenses, had been ped- 
dled all over the country amongst railway capitalists to find 
a buyer. The persons who conceived it and carried it out 
expected to get a large price for it, just as did the Washington 
lobbyists who obtained the Baltimore and Potomac charter 
from Maryland. 

" Why did not your Company buy the Stanhope charter ?" 
said I to the railway's Vice-President. 

" Because our counsellor told us that it would be decided 
illegal, in intent, in the Jersey tribunals, and we would buy 



VICE-PRESIDENT COLFAX'S STOCK. 523 

lawsuit with it. No ! we have learned by sore chastisement to 
operate upon the Legislatures in our own way, t and they can't 
cook up charters to sell us." 

The States of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Mary- 
land, Virginia, and of the South generally, have Legislatures 
which are the silent partners of a few — sometimes only one — 
railroad man. He treats the members as partly privileged 
creatures, and pays them with a free ride. They are hardly 
allowed the freedom of his acqaintance, except now and then 
in his Director's car, and at such times, generally, to hear 
long-winded harangues about the comprehensive plans of his 
railroad system. Mere dogs and Dives, and the cheapest men- 
dicants at the great man's crossings, they now and then sub- 
mit conspiringly to his rival's propositions, or, in extremities, 
contrive a scheme of their own to peddle with. No railway 
corporation can be honest and direct with Legislatures so 
servile or so corrupt, and hence such charters as the Credit 
Mobilier, the Stanhope, and various others are passed to sell, 
and bought of political speculators on the street. Neither do 
the great Railway Kings want to have free railroad laws, but 
prefer to possess Legislatures or buy their privileges under 
anonymous names in the public shambles. 

Such Legislatures elect nearly all the United States Senators 
in the East and Coastwise States. And hence the Senate is 
rapidly growing to be a sort of General Ticket Agents' Conven- 
tion, — to hold the seats for six years. What are the prospects 
of good and genuine government if these things be admitted ? 
No man for his heft ever had the faith of small families as 
fully as Mr. Colfax. Yet he testified to having owned this 
kind of stock while in Congress : 

Seven-thirty bonds, $5,000 

One share New York Tribune, $6,000 

Lake Superior Iron Company stock, . . . $5,000 

Western Rolling Mill stock, $5,000 

Receipts at the door for a railway lecture, . $12,000 

Adams Express stock, $5,000 

Alton and Terre Haute Railroad bonds, . . $5,000 
Credit Mobilier stock (denied') , . . . . ? 



524 A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

Such were the proceeds of the pocket-book of one of the 
most virtuous ^members of Congress in his day. A thousand 
readers may cry out, " What was to hinder him from holding 
such stock ?" But there will be a sigh and a reply from hun- 
dreds of cottages where the cotter's family believed that young 
Colfax never carried anything more worldly than some Sunday- 
school tickets and his necessary expenses. 

Congress, like a pack of gamester's cards, is stocked. It is 
full of stock, good, bad, and indifferent. The pockets of the 
most promising are filled with coupons, free express tickets, 
and an installment of the wages of Protection. 

A part of the remedy for railway corruptions in the East is 
a general law on the railroad subject, such as Ohio possesses, 
by which the little and the big road will have equal legal pro- 
tection and encouragement, and the Legislature be put out of 
the temptation of lobbyists. 

In the West the railway system is complicated with the land 
question, and the subject of excessive local taxation. The 
Hon. Sidney Clarke described to me, recently, the condition of 
Kansas, plastered three deep with county obligations to rail- 
ways, and yet the State Legislature is a passive instrumentality 
in the hands of two or three Railway Kings. At the same 
time, the farmer's corn is 15 cents a bushel, and large cities 
are languishing by reason of over-stimulation under railway 
influences. 

Kansas appears to have been the corrupt offspring of bellig- 
erent Freedom, debauched, like the 'daughter of Gustavus 
Adolphus, while all the soldiery of Protestantism were away 
fighting out her cause. 

The first ensnarer of this young State is said to have been 
Tom. Carney, a trader and shaver who became Governor, and 
got the maggot of the Senate on the brain, soon after the rise 
of the war. This is the same man who took $15,000 from 
Cadwell for getting off the track in 1873. Although beaten in 
politics, he is successful in business, and has become a whole- 
sale grocer in St. Louis. 



POMEROY S CHARACTER AND OWNERSHIP. 525 

Mr. Pomeroy was also a wholesale grocer in the important 
article of bonds, — not to mention vocal praise." He fell into 
the practice of all Kansas Senators, of being possessed in fee 
simple by somebody 'else. Gaylord owned Pomeroy, just as 
Leon Smith possessed a good deal of Caldwell, and Jim Legate 
of Carney. Mr. Legate attempted to sell Mr. Pomeroy 's vote 
for $100,000 in the Impeachment trial; and Mr. Gaylord, his 
brother-in-law, is a New York metropolitan at present, with a 
clear million. Pomeroy lives at Atchison, nominally, where 
he has a large farm, over which roam herds of Angola goats, 
trained to utter religious sounds, and further stupefy and seduce 
men of prayer in Kansas. These goats utter a cry which is said to 
sound wonderfully like the word " Amen," and many of them do 
continually cry the same whenever Mr. Pomeroy is known to 
be at home, so as to convey an impression of his orthodoxy*. 
He lives, however, in fact and intention, at Washington City, 
with alternations of Massachusetts. He married for his third 
consort a very agreeable and spirited Massachusetts lady, of 
gracious fortune in her own right, who is well thought of at the 
Federal Capital by all sorts of people. 

In bearing, worldly tone, and understanding, Pomeroy is the 
superior of anybody we have seen here from Kansas. To look 
upon, he is baldish, large, cheerful-faced, and looks like the pro- 
prietor of a large hotel who was fond of having a clergyman for 
a guest. His most statesman-like motion is the picking of his 
teeth and the writing of his autograph. He bears no malice, 
is always gladdened to have an opponent make it up and be 
neighborly, and* deprecates agitation, journalism, charity out- 
side the party, and all other such dangerous precedents. He 
holds it to be a more beautiful act of. one's life to kick a Dem- 
ocrat out of his seat than to expose a party associate who has 
stolen into it. In like manner, he would hold the door to prevent 
scandalous witnesses looking in upon a good man temporarily 
in temptation, and, if necessary to compose the good man tem- 
porarily, would h? /e the door held upon himself. In short,- a 
well-regulated, bodily-enjoying, morally-squint-eyed man is 



526 A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

Pomeroy, without indignations, talents or anything more than 
a business love of money. He holds that whatever is is right. 
He went to Kansas when all the youth and fortitude there were 
alert to compete with armed slavery, and the weapon which he 
grasped was a bag of beans. The wind naturally resident in 
the bean — as too many inventors know who have sought to ex- 
tract it — took Pomeroy into politics. He came in, and went 
out on his belly. With him retires the nearest approach to 
Falstaff, who has been in the Senate since Humphrey Marshall 
or John M. Clayton. They possessed none of Falstaff's dis- 
honesty, and Pomeroy none of his wit ; but there was a veri- 
table humor in the latter's utter want of moral nature, and 
easy assumption of it. Like Falstaff, he was once a general, 
and Phillips' letters on Kansas show him parading around in 
this title. 

In Massachusetts, Pomeroy had been a member of the Leg- 
islature ; this fact, the generalship, and the beans put him 
into the Senate in the same combination with that great Bor- 
der Ruffian of the North, Jim Lane of Kansas. His first term, 
like the second, was distinguished by that close attention to 
committee-business, and postmasterships, and perfect indiffer- 
ence to individual expression and national influence, which 
seem to be the surest roads to re-election now-a-days. In 1867 
he beat Carney and A. L. Lee — the latter a general, subse- 
quently, in Banks' army. The only acts recorded of him . in 
twelve years, according to McPherson's political histories of 
the Rebellion and Reconstruction, have been : February 1, 1865, 
to substitute the word " condition " ot rebellion for " state " 
of rebellion ; in January, 1865, to admit the Senators and 
Members from Arkansas — a moral oft-shoot of Kansas in Re- 
publican politics ; and April 19, 1870, to make Georgia " the 
Third Military District," and so prepare it for an election in 
the following November. 

This is his record, except that he voted "right" and stead- 
ily with his party on every question, from Stultification to Santo 
Domingo. I do not believe that he would have ever sold his 



* SENATOR CALDWELL 527 

vote on the Impeachment trial ; he was too good a party man 
and too arrant a coward. Inside that party line, where mean- 
ness could creep and be covered, he was like a jackal, preying 
under the cover of darkness. But the spirit of a martyr to 
the faintest degree, he never possessed. He lost twenty-six 
pounds avoirdupois in two days, when the Legislature of Kan- 
sas passed a - tides against him for bribery ; and, when he arose 
to talk in tne Senate, the other day, it was like Falstaff after 
tlie Prince had cut him : " His nose was sharp as a pen, and 
'a bablerof the green fields, and 'a could never abide carnation ; 
'twas a color he never liked." 

Caldwell came up to the Senate by the good, broad, shame- 
less road which Carney and Pomeroy had made. They had 
walked the pave until any timorous nymph could venture to 
face it ; the first step is half the journey, but twelve years of 
Pomeroy might, have made all Kansas Caldwellian. 

The present accession " on the town " was gristly, little, and 
with no naturally immoral constitution. Nature did not con- 
tribute to his longevity those burly hips and shoulders, that 
back of the neck, and perfect flatness of foot, which she gives 
to her legitimate jobber in politics. He was scrawny, and the 
color of his hair was like the leaves of the nubbin-pine in win- 
ter, — brittle and undecidedly red. It might have been seen 
with half an eye that Caldwell would slip up in politics, being 
too vulgar and direct at it. He kept no amen goats, exuded no 
oil on the soft evening before the Sabbath-day, and looked out 
of place with a bandana handkerchief. He was, in truth, a 
wandering express clerk from Pennsylvania, who appeared in 
Kansas just prior to the war, and settled in Leavenworth City. 
Having some aid from the East — variously stated by himself 
to be derived from Cameron and Scott — he picked up money in 
speculation, and, in company with an uneducated but adroit 
team-contractor named Leonard Smith, he shared in the prof- 
its of the overland trade, from Fort Leavenworth to the Plains, 
being first book-keeper, and ultimately General Superintendent 
of the Overland Freight Company. They are so given to slan- 



528 A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

ders in Kansas politics, that there is no reliance to be placed 
upon the charge that he undid his employers by peeping at their 
proposals, nor that he claimed to be a cousin of Simon Cam- 
eron, nor that he said Tom. Scott would back him for the Sen- 
ate to any amount. The business of freighting to the amount 
of two millions per annum gave Mr. Caldwell " claims " on the 
Quartermaster's Department, of course. Nobody ever worked 
for the Government who was not entitled to " relief." Some 
years subsequently, these claims,, and the decline in Leaven- 
worth real estate, some experience which he had in getting 
possession of the Delaware diminished reserve lands in 186*6 
(price $2.50 per acre), and interests in a couple of railways, 
started Caldwell upon the race for the Senate. He proclaimed 
his intentions in the autumn of 1870. In two months he 
"fixed" the Legislature by taking , the advice of Leon Smith, 
going boldly into the market for votes, and startling public im- 
pulsiveness in Kansas by stating that the pecuniary resources 
" behind him " were illimitable. The average man out there 
is said to run for the Legislature from his youth up, and it was 
fashionable to sell one's vote when successful, in order to show a 
peaceful and accommodating mood, and keep realestate steady. 

Mr. Caldwell paid away, as has been shown by the testimony 
and by the blank-books, $88,091 ivhich have been discovered. 
He made his campaign in just three months, bought 1 the bosom- 
friends of Mr. Sidney Clarke, bought High, Low, Jack, and 
the Game, and was elected at the dropping of the hat. 

He was not a natural politician. He was menaced by all the 
other defeated candidates to whom he would not make contribu- 
tions . in an eleemosynary way. Moreover, his Leavenworth 
property declined. Credit Mobilier came in malapropos and 
aroused the country. He found Carney and all the set poking 
his checks at him. And, in the hurly-burly, despite the earnest 
intercessions of " pal" Harlan, the great forerunner and pro- 
genitor of Caldwell, Mr. Pomeroy was ostracised by the Leg- 
islature on the paltry showing of $7,000 cash in hand. For 
this small and perfectly innocent consideration, Mr. Pomeroy 
was deserted even in Kansas. 



gen. Fremont's little affair. 529 

Thus was the winter of the discontent 
Made red-hot summer by this sum of York 

(shillings understood.) Mr. Harlan and myself do not believe 
this story . We quote the hymn to ourselves, beginning : 

Bribes, idle bribes, we know not what they mean : 

Bribes, from the depth of some divine despair 

Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, 

In looking on the happy Kansas fields, 

And thinking of the beans that are no more. 

Harlan, an Ex-Senator says thus, in the Daily paper, which 
he publishes : 

" It is about time for the opposition press to discover that the 
people are heartily sick of this cry about the corruption of those 
members who were inveigled into the purchase of Credit Mo- 
bilier stock. The amount they received was too ridiculously 
small for such a noise." 

This is the first time we ever heard of the young lady's apol- 
ogy for her foundling applied in State questions-: 

" Please, sir, it's such a little one ! " 

For otherwise is the treatment of people who impose upon 
the public credit, and the credulity of mankind in other coun- 
tries. General Fremont never received any indictment here 
for using the name of the United States to sell bonds in Paris, 
but the particulars of the sentence at Paris of Fremont and 
those interested with him in the negotiation of Memphis and El 
Paso, have been brought by late European mails. The opinion 
of the Court is described as having been clear., compact, and 
well-written. One of the points taken as clearly proved was, 
that out of the 20,600,000 francs which had been subscribed to 
the spurious bonds, 18,599,000 francs had been distributed 
among the promoters of the scheme as commissions, and 
paid out for bringing the bonds into public notice. The 
sentences passed were as follows : Gen. Fremont, Probst, and 
Auffermann to five years' imprisonment and 3,000 francs fine ; 
Crampon to four years years' imprisonment and 3,000 francs 
fine; Gaudree-Boileau to three years' imprisonment; LissignoL 
34 



530 A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

to two years' imprisonment and 3,000 francs fine ; Poupinel to 
one years' imprisonment and 3,000 francs fine. Fremont, 
Probst, and Auffermann were not present, and were declared 
fugitives from justice. The confiscation of 50,000 francs bail 
for Probst was ordered, as well as the guarantees given by the 
others accused, and all the prisoners were condemned to pay 
damages to the plaintiffs in the civil suit, and the costs of suit. 
The only case for which there is any sympathy in Paris was 
that of the Baron Gaudree-Boileau, Fremont's brother-in-law, 
and this because he had returned the proceeds of the sale of 
his share of bonds, and claimed that they were given to him 
by Fremont, in settlement of old family claims. The Baron 
Gaudree-Boileau was formerly Consul-General at New York, 
subsequently Ambassador and Minister Plenipotentiary of 
France at Peru, and a man of high position and general respect. 

Another class of frauds is the sale of lands voted by Con- 
gress for Agricultural Colleges to rings of politicians. 

A gentleman who had Arkansas State scrip to sell, came to 
see me one day, and asked why it was that the Land Depart- 
ment refused to arrange for the delivery of cash on Agricul- 
tural College scrip, until a certain man in Cleveland, Ohio, 
(by name George P., or " Pop-corn," Lewis), had been accepted 
as the best bidder for the said scrip. If the scrip sells for 96, 
and the Cleveland man offers but 90, why is it that the facil- 
ities for deliveiy are tightened on the man, unless he goes to 
Cleveland ? 

Here we have another Ring, perhaps. 

We hear very little of such abuses in the huge annual reports 
of the Heads of Departments. 

At the time of the year when persimmons drop, and sausage 
appears in the market, the annual reports creep out of the 
government printing office. We are full of these thick docu- 
ments, stitched together generally without indices, and brought 
into the world before their time. Some of them, like the 
Agricultural Report, are made up of cheap essays, advertised 
with a plate of a college, and they smell of green beans and 
dried apples. Others, like the Treasury Report, are the loose 



POLITICIANS OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 531 

presentations of business men, separately interesting, but bound 
together without agreement or design. 

These reports are generally called together sometime before 
the Secretary writes his essay, each subordinate head of bureau 
contributing his quotum, and each part is sent in the green 
leaf to the printer, who hashes it up amongst his compositors, 
and, after* much expenditure in corrections and proofs, it is 
sent to the Secretary, who reads it, and thus becomes aware 
of how little he knew before. When the Secretary has read 
two or three dozen of these reports, he becomes a formidable 
man to meet on the street, for he forthwith tackles everybody 
on the subject-matter of them, and, if you will watch him 
carefully, you will see that he is merely practising what he has 
got by rote, upon you, to see whether you can suggest anything. 
He talks all round the universe in this way, until he is satisfied 
that he has found some convictions. With these convictions 
he proceeds to bully everybody, and, by passing his report to 
and from the printers several times, it is finally licked into a 
sort of literary shape. By the gospel of finance thus revealed 
to its apostle, the convictions of a great party are defined. 
Every time the Secretary writes a report, he feels more learned, 
and consequently more dogged. In course of time, he grows 
to affect a supreme contempt for criticism, although he himself 
criticizes foreign nations, Adam Smith, and Amasa "Walker. 
The larger number of our administrative statesmen are of this 
pattern — politicians who have come up through the surface on 
a party trap, and, by rising to dizzy heights of conspicuousness, 
are suddenly precipitated on all fours into administration. 

The provincialism of our Congress has been referred to, in a 
former chapter, — its disregard of the nation in its rapacity to 
get local privileges. As I have referred to the public men 
of Kansas, I may also say something of a still more remote 
and provincial class of public men at Washington, " the 
sun-downers." 

The politics and politicians , of the Pacific coast are below 
the grade of their occasion. , There is no man of them who 



532 A TILT AT SOME OP THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

has niind enough to propel a dummy engine up the smallest 
grade of the Pacific Railway. The universal opinion of Cali- 
fornians, that I have seen, is conclusive upon this point. None 
of them are equal to the question, of Asiatic labor, nor to any 
similar question which is now prominent in the minds of the 
capitalists and merchants of California. 

Senator Cole was a courtly, cautious man, of wealth and 
ambition, and in the Lower House he would make an industri- 
ous , factor for his constituents. He is honest, modest, and 
selfrrespecting. Nature "made him well, but somewhat between 
the period when she cast her ^arge guns. He is a well-built 
man, of the medium height, carefully dressed, with black eyes, 
hair, and beard. His home and family are models for those of 
other legislators. Emergency might make a strong character 
of him, .but whatever vigorous traits he possesses, are subor- 
dinated to vigilant self-restraint, and, indeed, one is often un- 
aware that he sits in the Senate at all for months at a time. 
He is of New York extraction, and of Irish and English mixture. 
He went to California at twenty-seven years of age, worked 
awhile in the mines, and was sent to Congress for his good 
habits as an offset to McDougall, the gifted drunkard, whom 
he succeeded. 

Casserly, Cole's colleague, is a great improvement on the 
grain, manners, and acquirements of Conness, whom he suc- 
ceeds. Yet he is not up to the demands of a State like Cal- 
ifornia, and in the publicizing of him a good schoolmaster 
seems to have been spoiled. 

He is so rich as to be called very rich. I am tolcl that the 
wealthiest individual in California is not worth above ten mil- 
lions. The leading men of California are mainly either origi- 
nal or secondary emigrants from New York State, — sharp 
business people, dashing salesmen, good shipping clerks, but 
in public life managers rather than salesmen cast in the mould 
of Seward, Seymour, Yan Buren, and Fenton. Collectively, 
they make a strong crowd, but when you ask them to produce 
individuals with minds and spectacles that look beyond the 



POLITICIANS OP THE PACIFIC COAST. 533 

horizon, they are not apt to respond according to the terms. 
I am not sure that California has ever produced a single man 
of positive political eminence. Broderick is held in less repute 
by those who know him in California than we have believed. 
I have been making inquiries of Californians for a good while 
as to the height of his intellectual measurement, and they never 
respond with enthusiasm, though always saying : 

" He was a good, warm-hearted fellow, who stuck to his 
friends. The man that killed him made him famous." 

The Senators from Oregon rank a little above and a little 
below California in intellectuality. Corbett is scarcely the 
peer of either Casserly or Cole. He is a reduced copy of Cole 
in some things, is only 42 years old, and socially is a refined 
little man who made his money by keeping a store a't Portland, 
Oregon. His birthplace is Massachusetts. His education was 
meagre. He became a Republican by tradition and conviction 
early in the struggle, and was sent to the Senate without chi- 
canery. There is no particular reason why Oregon should send 
any great orator here, " to hear no sound save his own dash- 
ing," and Corbett is a pleasant, trim, chirping little man to 
come out of the woods, as daintily as if out of a bandbox. 

In George H. Williams, now Attorney-General, who lives in 
Portland, the same town with Corbett, we have a stronger type 
of man than any we have been considering. He has been 
Chief Justice of Oregon, and is a lawyer of sound and heavy 
mind. His birthplace was Columbia County, New York, and 
he was afterward a Judge in Iowa. He has a tall, stoop- 
shouldered structure, and a rather muddled, obtuse, lowering 
look, with a frown and a bushy eyebrow entangled together. 
When he comes to work, however, you see that he is a solidly- 
poised, well read, immovable man. But he gives no indications 
of a new type of man, such as the Pacific slope might be sup- 
posed to model. In short Oregon and California are failures, 
politically. There is no man in Congress who is equal to the 
inspirations of his coast, its canons and pine trees and cataracts : 
nor to its destinies, Austria, China, Alaska : nor to its peo- 



534 A TILT AT SOME OP THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

pie, that strong vanguard of the new nation who are to spangle 
the western coast with such maritime cities as Italy established 
in the fourteenth century. 

It is in the sparsely settled little State of Nevada — the 
seven months' child of State, admitted to the Union "before it 
was grown, and not up to its growth even now — that we find 
the first sparks of political genius and no scrupulousness. 
Stewart and Nye are both New Yorkers, born* within fifty miles 
of one another ; but Stewart is only forty-two years old and 
Nye is fifty-four. They live respectively at the neighboring 
Virginia and Carson cities, twelve hours by rail from San 
Francisco. Nye, or Jim Nye, as he likes to call himself, is a 
strange specimen of what New York politics can do with a 
poetic nature. He is partly Irish and partly French, in origin, 
a man of large frame and appetites, a native orator, with a 
most impressive appearance, hair long, luxuriant, and prema- 
turely whitened, a fat, priest-like face, prominent brows, no 
beard, large bluish-gray eyes, a large mouth filled with white 
teeth, and a stoutish, genteel body. He is the best speaker on 
instantaneous occasion in the United States Senate. He has 
the quality of imagination, of which that body is almost desti- 
tute- — Sumner having a little, Nye having all the rest. Dick 
Yates has a good deal of Nye's readiness, but none of .his 
imagination. Yates and Nye both appeal to the Deity in 
every apostrophe, and every other sentence is an apostrophe 
with them. But Yates expires with an invocation ; Nye is 
vivid and fertile in description, full of Irish humor and broad 
ex-aggeration, equal to the most exalted buncombe and vivid in 
his mastery of forensic demagoguery. His cunning and his 
good nature glide into and conceal each other. The redeeming 
element of his nature is his early and positive convictions upon 
the slavery question, which go back to the time of Van Buren 
and the Free Soilers, twenty years ago. Many a man is dead 
and buried on the field of battle who heard the young and fiery 
utterances of Jim Nye in his childhood, and parted links with 
slavery from that moment. He has probably delivered four or 



SENATOR NYE. 535 

five hundred speeches on this question, and supported his 
rhetoric with a good deal of physical courage. He is happiest 
when he leaves human rights, upon questions of sensuous — 
the beauty of woman, the charms of love, the inviolability of 
friendship, and those other pleasant platitudes which are always 
in order, like a cork-screw or a pair of slippers. For a free- 
and-easy dinner he is the best man in the Senate to invite out. 
As a politician he is a good outrider and " stumper ;" but his 
vanity is often stronger than his discretion. As an opponent 
in debate he is sometimes magnanimous, but frequently blister- 
ing and bilious, with humor between, like thunderclaps in sun- 
shine. He said in my presence one day about Sprague, after 
describing him : 

" I can't hit a canary bird like that with a cannon ball." 

And, as I afterward observed, his speech upon Sprague was 
pleasant and forbearing, and knowing Nye's vigor and shyness 
of repartee as I did, it raised him in my estimation vastly. 

Nye was a boy of the public schools, and he is proud of it. 

He was a " stumper" for the Sewardites down to 1860, when 
he became a Police Commissioner of New York city. In 1861 
he came to Washington, before any troops arrived, mustered a 
little regiment of Congressmen, clerks and so forth, and marched 
upon the Arsenal. There , he found Commander Buchanan, 
of the ^tavy, filling shells with sawdust and dirt, and he boarded 
the ship Powhattan and took him off by force. He was sent 
to Nevada by Mr. Lincoln as Governor; and in 1865 he took 
his seat in the Senate. The temperament and education of 
Mr. Nye are responsible for many of his eccentricities. He is 
the most popular orator on the Pacific coast, and can get a 
crowd together on a few hours' notice every time he goes to 
San Francisco. He lacks, that sturdy, thoughtful dignity and 
gravity of character which makes our Saxon orators great — 
makes Webster rise above his potations, and though drunken, 
be a drunken Jove ; or Fox, returning from the gaming table 
ruined, calmly discuss Plutarch and iEschylus. Both Nye and 



536 A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLIN'S. 

Stewart are reputed to be protectors in the Senate of the Cen- 
tral Pacific as opposed to the Union Pacific Railroad. 

Stewart is a tall, angular, Flemish-bearded man, of a shining 
temperament, practical ambition, and extraordinary industry, 
and he is a pet of Nye, whom he excels in all amiable qualities 
except ready genius. He is the son-in-law of the- celebrated 
Henry S. Foote, of Tennessee, formerly of Mississippi, the 
stormy petrel or rather the senile and chattering blackbird of 
our legislative history. Foote is living in retirement, and we 
seldom hear of him ,now-a-days : 

" And in the sultry garden squares, 
Now his flute notes are changed to coarse , 
I hear him not at all, or hoarse, 
As when a hawker hawkes his wares." 

These are some or all of the more conspicuous legislators of 
the Pacific Coast. " They do not fill the bills." They are 
merely sundry people shaken off the fringes of the East. Jones, 
Nye's successor, proclaimed to the legislature which elected 
him, that it was no disgrace to have spent and taken money 
in the election of a Senator. 

The Indian business of the country in its worst form, buying 
goods, making agencies, intriguing for Indian trust funds, land 
treaties, etc., has been long handled by a Senator from Iowa 
and one from Kansas, Harlan and Pomeroy. Our Indian 
policy is now as in the past a mixture of weak humanitarianism 
and executive bunglary. And it is notorious that the worst 
politicians, the most rascally and cruel attorneys, and the 
craftiest type of shopkeepers are those who insist upon the 
present Indian policy. They wish to deal with the savage as 
if he were a fool ; for in that capacity they can make most use 
of him and us, instead of arousing, him to be a man, and a 
man he is and that a crazed one when he raises the hatchet. 

A rural friend came here the other day and asked me to 
show him through the Patent-Office. We saw the yellow buck- 
skin breeches of Washington, his tent-poles, and his camp 
equipage, and then his bolster-cases embroidered by his wife's 



INDIAN TROPHIES. 537 

hand. My aged friend, who had recently lost his wife, watered 
at the eyes when he saw this last, for, no doubt, he thought 
of his own old sweetheart, quilting away on the old-fashioned 
quilting frame the very coverlets which now made him warm 
of nights, while she was lying out in the cold grave-yard. 
Those widowers' tears made Washington and his wife rise up 
before me alive, and I went over the same old museum with 
as keen an interest for the hundredth as for the first visit. 
We saw the jewel-hilted swords given to sailors and envoys, 
long since deceased, but wrested away by the jealous republic ; 
and the narrow-chested coat which wrapped the gaunt body of 
Jackson on the day of New Orleans, hung within the glass 
case in helpless appeal. So, through thousands of patent mod- 
els we kept our way, until at last we reached the land office, 
and the communicative Commissioner took us into h is separate 
museum. 

" Come here Custis 1" he said, " I want you to put on Big 
Bull's holiday suit." 

An attendant stood upon a chair, — a small, modest, smooth- 
faced man, — and tlie Commissioner passed up to him out of a 
box a bundle of gear, made of buffalo's horns, robe, forelocks, 
and mane, and the man fitted the thing on his head. Immedi- 
•ately he was metamorphosed to a devil, with a row of horns 
reaching from his ears to his heels, and the thick, bushy hair of 
the buffalo shook round his chops and heart. 

" Meet that figure on the field, of torture after the battle is 
done," said the Commissioner, " and you would think Satan was 
waiting right by for your soul. That was the favorite dress of 
Big Bull, a Cheyenne chief of gigantic size, who died in battle 
with the Pawnees, putting his hands over his ears and rushing 
into death, while his wife brained her two infants, and died 
fighting with him." 

The Commissioner then showed us a gala dress of a brute 
Sioux brave, made entirely of the cured skin of human scalps, 
and fring-ed with the long locks of white females. 



538 A TILT AT SOME OF THE GEEAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 

• " See here," he said, " this scalp has an auburn thread run- 
ning through it ; by the light it shows like dark gold. This 
scalp is flaxen, and is soft as a boy's. These short ones are 
children's scalps. And here is one with a suggestion of grey — 
an old woman's maybe." 

My widower friend's eyes were full again, and a resisted 
" pucker " came to his mouth. 

There was the hair that had been the pride of its wearer, 
when she came to the arms of some strong young pioneer 
bridegroom, and laid it upon his breast after the labor of the 
day. Children had played with it, twining it round their fin- 
gers, and beneath it had lain the years of housekeeping cares, 
the dreams of competence and independence, the yearnings of 
the woman's prayer that the Kingdom of God might come and 
His peace flow like a river. The grey strands had crept into 
it like the first grey lights into the sky at evening, and the 
peace of home and love which passeth all understanding had 
shone from, the failing eyes beneath those changing tresses. 
She repined not, because the wealth and beauty of their former 
times were reproduced in her blooming girls, and- then she felt 
a realization that her years had not been lived and tried in 
vain, but that, as a frontiersman's wife, she had become one of 
the pilgrim mothers of a Western race. 

Then in one moment, out of the ground arise the painted 
shapes of darkness ; the earth becomes a yell. Stricken at the 
feet of some savage the bleeding figure lies ; bloody hands are 
twisted in these hairs of grey ; the knife describes the circle ; 
the shining glory of the matron's head dangles at the Indian's 
knee amongst the fringes of his bloody shirt. 

Here it is in the Patent Office, making this widower's eyes 
water as he feels the story, and then the Commissioner says : 

" Have you seen Spotted Tail and Swift Bear ? They were 
here this morning, and are a fine-looking set of Chiefs." 

" Yes," says the widower, still looking at the old woman's 
scalp, " I heard that they had been here." 

Nothing but a real, vigorous, original administration of the 



♦ ■ THE BACK PAY VOTE. 539 

Government by men used to governing, aided by a permanent 
civil service will reform us. We must also elect a Congress 
of men who can stand watching. And apropos of this, a good 
list to keep in the family for reference is that which shows the 
vote upon back pay, — the most insolent act of the worst Con- 
gress we have had since the period of emancipation. It is 
printed here because the names involved will arise before the 
public as candidates for office during the years in which our vol- 
ume will be consulted. 

That vote was taken on the 3d of March, and is given in the 
subjoined table ; Republicans in Roman, Liberal Republicans 
in small capitals and Democrats in italics, the names of mem- 
bers not then re-elected to the XLIIcl Congress being preceded 
by an asterisk. Of the 36 Senators voting Yea, 22 were Re- 
publicans, 10 Democrats, and 4 Liberal Republicans ; of these, 
5 Republicans, 2 Liberal Republicans and 2 Democrats were 
outgoing members. Twenty Republicans, 5 Democrats, and 2 
Liberal Republicans voted No, 2 Republicans being outgoing 
members. Of the 11 Senators not voting, 7 were Republicans, 
5 of them being outgoing members, 2 were Liberal Republi- 
cans, and 2 Democrats. In the House 102 members voted for 
the increase, 96 voted against it, and 42 did not vote at all, 
being absent or having " paired off." Of the affirmative vote 
56 were Republicans, 44 Democrats, and two Liberal Republi- 
cans ;. the outgoing members being 27 Democrats, 22 Republi- 
cans, and two Liberal Republicans. The negative vote was 
composed of 61 Republicans, 32 Democrats, and three .Liberal 
Republicans ; of these 23 Democrats, 32 Republicans, and 3 
Liberal Republicans were outgoing members. Of those not 
voting, 26, were Democrats, 15 Republicans, and 1 Liberal 
Republican; 14 Democrats, 10 Republicans, and 1 Liberal 
Republican being outgoing members. 



540 



A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 



YEAS, (OR THOSE 

Alcorn, Miss. 
Ames, Miss. 
Bayard, Del. 
Blair, Mo. 
Brownlow, Tenn. 
Caldwell, Kan. 
Cameron, Penn. 
Carpenter, Wis. 
Clayton, Ark. 
Cooper, Tenn. 
Davis, W. Va. 
Flanagan, Tex. 

NAYS, (OR THOSE WHO 

Anthony, R. I. 
Boreman, TV. V. 
Buckingham, Conn. 
Casserly, Cal. 
Chandler, Mich. 
Conkling, N. Y. 
*Corbett, Oregon. 
Cragin, N. H. 
Edmunds, Vt. 

Q 

*Cole, Cal. 
Ferry, Conn. 
Morton, Ind. 
Harlan, Iowa. 



SENATE. 

WHO VOTED TnEMSELVES MONEY.) 



Gilbert, Fla. 
Goldthwaite, Ala. A 

Hamilton, Tex. 
*Hill, Ga. 
Hitchcock, Neb. 
Lewis, Va. 
Logan, 111. 
Machen, Ky. 
Morrill, Me. 
Norwood, Ga. 
*Nye, Nev. 
*Osborn, Fla. 

DID NOT LIKE MONEY 

Ferry, Mich. 
Frelinghuysen, N. J. 
Hamilton, Md. 
Hamlin, Me. 
Howe, Mich. 
Kelley, Oregon. 
Morrill, Vt. 
^Patterson, N. H. 
Pratt, Ind. 

NOT VOTING. 
*Pomeroy, Kansas. 
Stevenson, Ky. 
*Ray, La. 
Fenton, N. Y. 



*Pool, N. C. 
Ransom, N. C. 
*Rice, Ark. 
Robertson, S. C. 
*Sawyer, S. C. 
Spencer, Ala. 
Stewart, Nev. 
Stockton, Cal. 
Tipton, Neb. 
*Trumbull, 111. 
Vickers, Md. 
West, La.— 36. 

OF that kind.) 
Ramsey, Minn. 
Saulsbury, Del. 
Schurz, Mo. 
Scott, Penn. 
Sherman, Ohio. 
Sprague, R. I. 
Thurman, Ohio. 
Windom, Minn. 
Wright, La.— 27. 

Johnston, Va. 

Sumner, Mass. 

* Wilson, Mass.— 11. 



yeas, (or 
Adams, Ky. 
Averill, Minn. 
*Banks,- Mass. 
*Bigby, Ga. 
*Bingham, Ohio, 
*Blair,Mo. 
*Boarman, La. 
*Boles, Ark. 
*Buckley, Ala. 



HOUSE. 

" THOSE WHO MADE 

*Bu'rdett, Mo. 
Butler, Mass. 
Butler, Tenn. 

* Caldwell, Tenn. 

* Carroll, N. Y. 
Cobb, N. C. 
*Coghlan, Cal. 

* Conner, Texas. 
*Critcher, Va. 



A RAISE.") 

Crossland, Ky. 
Darrall, La. 
*Dickey, Penn. 
*Du Bose, Ga. 
Duell, N. Y. 
*Dul-e, Va. 
Eldridge, Wis. 
Elliott, S. C. 
*Foster, Penn. 



THE SALARY GRAB. 



541 



Garfield, Ohio. 
* Garrett, Term. 
*Getz, Penn. 
Giddings, Tex. 
*Golladay, Term. 
* Griffith, Penn. 
Hancock, Tex. 
*Hanks, Ark. 
Harmer, Penn. 
*Harper, N. C. 
*Harris, Miss. 
Hays, Ala. 
Hazel ton, N". J. 
Herndon, Tex. 
Houghton, Cal. 
Kendall, Nev. 
*Ki7ig, Mo. 
Lamison, Ohio. 
Lamport, N. Y. 
Lansing, N. Y. 
Leach, N. C. 
Lowe, Kan. 
Maynard, Tenn. 
McHenry, Ky. 
McJunkin, Penn. 

NAYS, (OR THOSE 

* Ambler, Ohio. 
Archer, Md. 
Arthur, Ky. 
Barber, Wis. 
*Barnum, Conn. 
*Beatty, Ohio. 
*Bell, N. H. 
*Bird, N. J. 
*Blair, Mich. 
Bright, Tenn. , 
Bufhnton, Mass. 
^Bunnell, 
Burchard, 111. 

* Campbell, Ohio. 
Clarke, Texas. 
Coburn, Ind. 



McKee, Miss. 
*McKinny, Ohio. 
*McNeeley, 111. 
*Meyers, B. F., Penn. 
Morey, La. 
*Morphis, Miss. 
Myers, L. Penn. 
Negley, Penn. 
*Niblack, Fla. 
Packard, Ind. 
Parker, Mo. 
*Peck, Ohio. 
*Perce, Miss. 
Perry, N. Y. 
Piatt, Va. 
*Price, Ga. • 
*Pfindle, N. Y. 
Bainey, S. C. 
Randall, Penn. 
*Rice, Ky. 
Robinson, 111. 
*Rogers, N. C. 
^Rogers, N. Y. 
Sargent, Cal. 
*Shanks, Ind. 



"WHO APPREHENDED 

Conger, Mich. 
Cotton, Iowa. 
*Cox, N.Y. 
*Crebs, 111. 
Crocker, Mass. 
Davis, W. Va. 
Dawes, Mass. , 
Donnan, Iowa. 
*Dox, Ala. 
Dunnell, Minn. 
Eames, R. I. 
*Ely, N. Y. 
*Farnsworth, 111. 
*Finkelnburg, Mo. 
Foster, Mich. 
Foster, Ohio. 



Sheldon, La. 

* Sherwood, Penn. 
Sloss, Ala. 
*Snapp, 111. 
Snyder, Ark. 
Storm, Penn. 
*Stoughton, Mich. 
Stowell, Va. 

St. John, N. Y. 
Sutherland, Mich. 
Sypher, La. 
*Taffe, Neb. 
Thomas, N. C. 
*Townsend, N. Y. 
*Turner, Ala. 
*Tuthill, N. Y. 

* Twitched, Mass. 
*Voorhees, Ind. 
Waddell, N. C. 
Wallace, S. C. 
Whiteley, Ga. 
Williams, Ind. 
Wilson, Ind. 

* Winchester, Ky. 
Young, Ga. — 102. 



a future life.) 
Frye, Me. 
*Goodrich, N. Y. 
Hale, Mb. 
*Handley, Ala. 
*Hambleton, Md. 
Harris, Va. 
Havens, Mo. 
*Hawley, Conn. 
Hawley, 111. 
*Hay, 111. 
Hazleton, Wis. 
*Hibbard, ]J. H. 
*Hill, N. J. 
Hoar, Mass. 
Holman, Ind. 
*Kellogg, Conn. 



542 A TILT AT SOME OF THE GREAT AND LITTLE GOBLINS. 



*Kerr, Ind. 
*Ketcham, N. Y. 
Killinger, Penn. 
*Lewis, Ky. 
♦Lynch, Me. 
*Manson, Ind. 
^McClelland, Penn. 
*McCormick, Mo. 
McCrary, Iowa. 
*McGrew, W. Va. 
*MacIntyre, Ga. 
Merriam, N. Y. 
*Merrick, Md. 
Monroe, Ohio. 
Niblack, Ind. 
Orr, Iowa. 

* Acker, Penn. 
♦Amies, Mass. 
Barry, Miss. 
♦Beck, Ga. 
Beck, Ky. 
*Biggs, Del. 
^Braxton, Va. 
Brooks, N. Y. 
Coming o, Mo. 
*Creeley, Penn. 
*Dodds, O. 
*Esty, Mass. 
Farwell, 111. 
*Forker, N. J. 



*Packer, Penn'. 
*Palmer, Iowa. 
*Parker, N. H. 
Pendleton, K. I. 
Poland, Vt. 
Roberts, E. H., N. Y. 
Rusk, Wis. 
Sawyer, Wis. 
Scofield, Penn. 
Sessions, N. Y. 
*Shellabarger, Ohio. 
Shoemaker, Penn. 
*Slater, Oregon. 
*Slocum, N. Y. 
Smith, N. Y. 
Smith, Ohio. 

NOT VOTING, (DODGING.) 

*Haldeman, Penn. 
*Ha!sey, N. J* 
Hereford, W. Va. 
Hooper, Mass. 
Kelley, Penn. 
*Kinsella, N. Y. 
Marshall, 111. 
Mitchell, Wis. 
♦Moore, 111. 
*Morgan, O. 
*Peters, Me. 
*Porter, Va. 
Potter, N. Y. 
Read, Ky. 



*Smith, Vt. 
Speer, Penn. 
Sj>rague, Oliio. 
♦Starkweather, Ct. 

* Stevens, Rl. 
♦Stevenson, Ohio. 
*Terry, Va. 
Townsend, Penn. 
*Upson, Ohio. 
♦Walden, Iowa. 
Waldron, Mich. 

* Warren, N. Y. 
Wells, Mo. 
♦Wheeler, N. Y. 
Willard, Vt. 
♦Wilson, Ohio.— 95. 

*Rice, 111. 
♦Ritchie, Md. 
Roberts, W. R., N. Y. 
*Roosevelt, N. Y. 
♦Seeley, N. Y. 
*Schober, N. C. 
Swann, Md. 
Tyner, Ind. 
*Van Trump, O. 
*Vaughan, Tenn. 
♦Wakeman, N. Y . 
Whitthorne, Tenn. 
Williams, N. Y. 
Wood, N. Y.— 42. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 



A RUNNING HISTORY OF IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

June loth, 1800, the public offices were opened at Washing- ) 
ton, and Congress assembled there for the first time, November 
22d. The laws of Virginia and Maryland were extended over 
the portions ceded by those States, which constituted respec- 
tively the counties of Alexandria and Washington, both of 
which had jurisdiction on the intermediate Potomac river. A 
court of three judges, with U. S. Circuit Court powers, was 
provided for, and also an orphans' court. 

February 11th, 1800, while a snow storm raged without, and 
intense partisan activity and bitterness went on within, the 
House of Representatives proceeded to ballot for the successor 
of John Adams. One member was carried to the Hall in a 
litter, and the ballot-box brought to his side. Express-riders 
were kept in relay from Washington to Richmond, and one 
Session of Congress continued for thirty-one hours. Jefferson 
and Burr were both in the city. On the thirty-sixth ballot, 
February 17th, Jefferson was elected. 

Washington was first so called explicitly by the three 
commissioners — Johnson, Stuart, and Carroll — in a letter ad- 
dressed to Major L' Enfant, from Georgetown, September 9th, 
1791. 

Under the first board of commissioners — Johnson, Carroll, 
and Stuart — who kept in office until 1794, there were sold 
6,227 Washington lots, for $541,384. The next board— Scott, 

543 



544 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

Carroll, and Thornton— sold 83 lots for $50,217. The third 
board— Scott, White, and Thornton— sold 101 lots for $41,081. 
About $117,000 failed to be collected. In 1802 the board was 
dissolved, and the office of Superintendent created, and 
Thomas Monroe appointed. He served until 1817, and sold 
238 lots for $51,652. Colonel Samuel Lane succeeded Monroe, 
and sold 69 lots for $21,128. 

The early commissioners held themselves accountable to 
nobody but the President, and their returns were short $126,- 
000, as late as 1825. Mr. Monroe was also reported derelict, and 
Lane failed to satisfy a committee of the Eighteenth Congress. 
The next Superintendent was Joseph Elgan, who had better 
business habits than his predecessors, and under him both the 
Capitol and President's house were fully restored. In 1825 
there remained unsold 3,406 lots belonging to the United 
States. 

Under the commissioners in the first eleven years of the 
city, the total expenditures were $900,857, of which $670,000 
were, gifts and cash receipts. The President's house had then 
cost $240,000 and the Capitol $330,000. The first Treasury 
and War Office cost nearly $90,000 ; and two bridges over Pock 
Creek, and one over the Tiber, $8,000. Two wharves at Pock 
Creek, and on the Eastern branch, had cost $11,000. The total 
expenditure for salaries, maps, office-rent, etc., had been $90,- 

000, on the part of the Commissioners. 

By the report of the Commissioners for the city, presented 
in the early months of Jefferson's administration, we find that 
soon after the 15th of May, 1801, there were 191 brick houses 
^finished, 408 wooden houses, and altogether 95 brick houses 
unfinished, and 41 wooden houses unfinished. 

The town of Carrollsburg has been mentioned as preceding 
the City of Washington, on a part of the site. Carrollsburg was 
situated between the Eastern branch and St. James's creek. 
Its streets, which were parallel with the river, in the order of 
recession from it, were Short, North, Union, Middle, and St. 
James;, crosswise, they were called, going down-stream, No. 

1, 2, 3, etc, to 8. 



EARLY PURCHASES OF LOTS. 545 

The most notable purchases of lots at the early sales — Octo- 
ber, 1791 — December, 1794 — were : 
I Tobias Lea^ whose purchases amounted to £572 ; 

Peter Charles l'Enfant, who paid but £25 upon his lot, and 
the remaining £198 was settled by the City of Washington; 

Wm. Augustine Washington, £225 ; 

Samuel Blodgett, who bought nearly to the amount of £2,000 ; 

Daniel Carroll of Duddington, who paid £555 for a shipping 
seat, near the mouth of the Eastern branch ; 

David Burns, who picked up, for £350, two of the most 
valuable lots now to be found, right opposite the Treasury ; 

James Hoban, architect of the President's house, who pur- 
chased to the amount of £900, on City Hall Hill, and Capitol 
Hill ; 

Thomas Sim 'Lee, who bought on the flats below the Presi- 
dent's, at low rates, and in small parcels ; 

George Washington, who gave £515 for four lots, on deep 
water, Eastern branch, one square behind Buzzards' point, and 
£400 for two lots between the subsequent Observatory and 
Rock Creek ; 

James Greenleaf, the greatest of all purchasers, who bought 
to the amount of more than £140,000, or about 6,000 lots, 
nearly all at Greenleaf point, and on the Eastern branch ; 

William Thornton, designer of the Capitol, who paid £200 
for his lot opposite Observatory hill. 

Greenleaf paid about £25,000 on his lots, and they passed 
over to Morris & Nicholson who died insolvent. This was the 
Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution. 

The ground where the U. S. Treasury stands, was the prop- 
erty of Thomas Davidson, who purchased it from the Commis- 
sioners, between October, 1792, and January, 1794. In time 
it came again into the hands of the United States. 

Where the Post-office building now stands, was Blodgett's 
Hotel, where the Thirteenth Congress met at President Mad- 
ison's call, September 19, 1817. 

On Pennsylvania Avenue, opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, 
35 



546 IMPEOVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

formerly stood the National Intelligencer office when Cockburn 
destroyed its type and presses. 

Between January, 1795, and January, 1800, we find these 
notable purchases: 

George Washington, who bought the lot on Capitol Hill, 
where the two residences belonging to his widow remained ; 

Walter Stewart, paying $17,823 ; Solomon Etting and 
Thomas Corcoran. 

Between 1800 and 1821, we find the following purchasers : 
Daniel Carroll, of Duddington ; Charles W. Goldsborough, 
Jonathan Elliott, Richard Cutts, who bought nearly $14,- 
000 worth of property outlying the White House reserv- 
ation. 

Much has been said about the cupidity of the rich propri- 
etors of land on the site of Washington, but John Law, a dis- 
tinguished citizen who had come to the place in 1800, charged 
in the year 1820, that the city was made too vast by the politi- 
cians in order to gratify their own cupidity, and tempt as many 
farm holders to give up half their property as possible. " To 
compel this the principal public buildings were widely separated ; 
no central points were designated at which improvements might 
commence, and gradually diverge, and therefore sufficient 
money was thrown away by men of enterprise on remote sit- 
uations capriciously selected, to have founded a very respect- 
able town in the beginning. The squares were also injudiciously 
subdivided into merely building lots, and improvidently sold 
to get money for public buildings, instead of being parceled 
out with space for shrubbery and gardens. Hence," said Mr. 
Law, " a loose and disconnected population was scattered over 
the city, and instead of a flourishing town the stranger who 
visited us, saw for years a number of detached villages, having 
no common interest, and furnishing little mutual support, hardly 
sustaining a market, and divided by great public reserva- 
tions." 

William Wirt, who went to school at Georgetown during the 
revolutionary war, says that he always understood that town 



WASHINGTON IN 1796. 547 



had taken its name from George Beall, who lived there, and 
whose daughter married the chief of the Magruders, (Wirt 
says McGregors) fugitives from Culloden to the borders of the 
future American Capital. 

A dispassionate English traveler (Weld), who visited the 
site in 1796, relates that Georgetown contained about 250 
houses, and Alexandria double the number, and that there were 
in Washington five thousand denizens, including artificers who 
formed by far the largest part of that number. The greatest 
number of houses at any one place was at Greenleaf 's point, 
which divided public opinion, as to its eligibility for trade, with 
the shores of the deeper waters of the Eastern branch. " Num- 
bers of strangers," says this guarded authority, " are continually 
passing and repassing through a place which affords such an 
extensive field for speculation." If the houses already built had 
been placed together, a very respectable town would have ap- 
peared upon the landscape, but some were building near George- 
town, some around the Capitol, some adjacent to the President's 
House, and the solitary unofficial construction of imposing 
appearance was a brick hotel, ornamented with stone, on the 
site of the present General Post-Office, "large, just roofed in, 
and anything but beautiful." The private houses were all 
plain buildings, and most of them built upon a speculation and 
still empty. The President's House had been " rUfehed up," 
was nearly done, and was undoubtedly the handsomest build- 
ing in the country, while the Capitol was but a little way above 
its foundations. No other public building had been begun, and 
although the published regulations required all houses to be of 
brick or stone, numbers of wooden habitations had been built, 
despite the caution that they might not be allowed to stand. 
" Notwithstanding all that has been done at the city and the 
large sums of money which have been expended, there are 
numbers of people in the United States living to the north of 
the Potomac, particularly in Philadelphia, who are still very 
adverse to the removal of the seat of government thither and 
are doing all in their power to check the progress of the build- 



r 548 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

ings in the city, and to prevent the Congress from meeting 
there at the appointed .time." 

The first account in book form of the District of Columbia, 
was written by Washington's Aide, Colonel Tobias Leon; the o. 
second book was soon afterward published as far from Wash- 
ington as the city of Paris, by Dr. Warden, and it gives some 
interesting particulars of early times at the little seat of re- 
publican government. From this book* we learn that Mr. 
Villard, afterwards a victim of the Scioto Company, first 
established the military depot at Greenleaf's point, which was 
full of Greenleaf's tumbling houses; that Blodgett's hotel cost 
•$36,000, besides the freestone which the Government gave him, 
and it was built by lottery. It was bought by the Government 
in 1810, for $10,000. ,Dr. Fra*d5in, a native of the West Indies, 
applied $3,000 to fit it up for a Patent Office and museum ; that 
the Great Falls locks took 100 workmen two years to build 
them; they are 100 feet long, 12 broad, and 18 deep. The 
canal at the point is 1 mile long, 6 feet deep, 25 feet wide, 
and descends 75 feet by five locks. Relics of these old locks 
remain (1873) on the farm of Caleb Gushing, on the Virginia 
side of the Great Falls. The subsequent Chesapeake and Ohio 
Canal, is quite a different affair. 

Dr. Warden says that in Madison's administration, " Nearly 
one-half the population is of Irish origin. The laboring class 
is chiefly Irish, and many of them have no acquaintance with 
the English language. * * * 

The President's house resembled Leinster house in Dub- 

The (old) Patent Office was constructed according to the 
plans of J. Hoban, Esq., who gained a prize for that of the 
President's house. * * * 

Mr. Law, brother of Lord Ellenborough, had proposed to 

* The title of this book is : A Chirographical and Statistical description of the 
District of Columbia, the seat of the General Government of the United States : 
Paris: Smith, Publisher, Rue Montmorency, 1816. By D. B. Warden, Ex-Con- 
sul. It is dedicated to Mrs. Custis. 



THE DIAEIES OF FIRST VISITORS. 549 

establish packet-boats to run between the Tiber creek and the 
Navy Yard on the cross-town canal. * * * 

The first Long bridge cost $96,000, and was opposed by the 
Goergetowners, as injurious to their ferry." 

Thus for the communicative Warden who proceeds with 
many other matters of interest. He tells us that " Benjamin 
King, English, was the first mechanical director of the Navy 
Yard, at a salary of $2,000 a year, and that frigates built there 
cost, originally, from $70,000 to $220,000." * * * 

Two academies were established as early as 1806; of the 
first, Rev. Robert Elliot was the principal — a native of Ireland 
and educated at Glasgow University. 

At Georgetown there was a female boarding-school, kept'by 
Madam Du Chevray, a native of France. * * *• 

The leading country seats were Parrot's and Peters's. * * 

^Foxhall's cannon foundry stood one mile above Georgetown, 
the proprietor being an Englishman whose machinery was made 
by one Glasgow, a Scotchman. It employed 80 workmen, 
chiefly emigrants. " A cannon was lately cast at this foun- 
dry, throwing a 100 pound ball, to which was given the name 
of Columbiad." 

The Georgetown bridges are described by Warden thus : One 
is of three arches, and is 135 feet long and 36 feet broad; the 
other is 650 yards further up stream, and is supported by piles ; 
it is 280 feet long and 18 wide. A daily packet boat ran be- 
tween Alexandria and Georgetown. So muddy was the latter 
place, that strangers described Georgetown as houses without 
streets ; Washington, streets without houses. 

Robert Sut cliff, a Quaker merchant of Sheffield, who visited 
Washington, in Jefferson's second term, and published a book, 
describes the watchmen of Alexandria blowing horns all night 
as they made their rounds, the excellence of Gadsby's inn, and 
the plentiful Quakers in Virginia and Maryland. He had for 
friends " T. M., of Sandy Springs — who was employed (1805) 
to fill up the deep channel of the Patowmack, on the south 
side of Mason's island, in order to turn the stream of that 



550 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

river to the side next to Georgetown," and Dr. Thornton and 
General Mason. He wrote hopefully of everything. 

Francis Ashbury wrote, March 12, 1815 : " I behold the ruins 
Of the Capitol and the President's house ; the Navy Yard, we 
burned ourselves. Oh, war ! war !" Here are some of his 
diary notes, previously : " We crossed over into Maryland at 
Georgetown. Surely the roads are bad ! " " 0, the clay ! 0, 
the insolvent roads. Obliged to wait an hour at Georgetown 
ferry. At Montgomery Court House, I found a decent, atten- 
tive congregation, in a house as well contrived and fitted for 
religious worship as any I have seen" (1801). 

Tom. Moore, the poet, at the age of 25, came to Washing- 
ton in the Summer of 1804, and " spent near a week with 
Mr. and .Mrs. Merry, the family of the English min- 
ister. They presented him at the levee of President Jefferson, 
whom he found sitting with General Dearborn, and one or 
two others, and in his usually homely costume, comprising 
slippers and Connemara stockings, in which Mr. Merry had 
been received by him — much to that formal minister's horror 
— when waiting upon him in full dress to deliver his credentials." 
Moore wrote a great deal of ridicule for the few days he spent 
at the Federal seat, and addressed his mother from Baltimore, 
saying the roads and the stage he took northward from the 
Capital were " of the most infamous description." Moore gave 
in a note to his Epistle to Thomas Hume, his prosaic idea ol 
the city in 1804 : 

" Most of the public buildings have been utterly suspended. 
The hotel is already a ruin ; a great part of the roof has fallen 
in, and the rooms are left to be occupied gratuitously by the 
miserable Scotch and Irish emigrants. The President's house, 
a very noble structure, is by no means suited to the philosoph- 
ical humility of its present possesor, who inhabits but a cor- 
ner of the mansion himself, and abandons the rest to a state 
of uncleanly desolation. This grand edifice is encircled by a 
very rude paling, through which a common rustic stile intro- 
duces the visitor to the first man in America. The private 



TOM. MOORE'S -.VERSES ON THE CAPITAL. 551 

buildings exhibit the same characteristic display of arrogant 
speculation and premature ruin." 

The following are some of Moore's oft-quoted rhymes upon 
the Capital at that date : 

" While yet upon Columbia's rising brow 
The showy smile of young presumption plays, 
* * 'tis heartless speculative ill, 
All youth's transgressions with all ages chill." 

u Even here already patriots learn to steal 
Their private perquisites from public weal, 
And guardians of the country's sacred fire, 
Like Afrte's priests, let out the flame for hire." 

" In fancy, now, beneath the twilight gloom, 
Come, let me lead thee o'er the second Rome 
Where tribunes rule, where dusky Davi bow, 
And what was Goose creek once is Tiber now; 
This embryo Capital, where fancy sees 
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees 
Which second-sighted seers, even now adorn 
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn." 

Moore then pays his respects to the mighty river, and land- 
scape gracing a race , 

" Of weak barbarians swarming o'er its breast 
Like vermin gendered on the lion's crest." 

The poet at this distance has grown relatively small as his 
impatient opinion of a city just begun. Goose creek is Tiber 
now, occupying a rank not inferior in North America to the 
Tiber over the ancient world. 

The roads in the State of Maryland leading to Washington, 
says Isaac Weld, writing in 1795, " are worse than in any State 
in the Union ; indeed, so very bad are they that on going 
from Elton to the Susquehanna ferry, the driver had frequently 
to call to the passengers in the stage to lean out of the carriage, 
first at one side, then at the other, to prevent it from oversetting 
in the deep ruts." He also describes the " execrable roads from 
the Susquehanna to Baltimore, the unpaved streets of Baltimore 
itself nearly impassible with water and stiff, yellow clay, and 



552 IMPROVEMENTS IN .WASHINGTON. 

the road thence to Washington, where a sulky will sink up to 
the very boxes ;" and adds: " General Washington, a short 
time before was stopped in the same place where I was en- 
gulfed, his carriage sinking so deep in the mud that it was 
found necessary to send to a neighboring house for ropes and 
poles to extricate it." 

Weld shows the sizes of the other cities of America, in 1796, 
to be as follows : 

" Lancaster, the largest of the interior towns, contained 900 
houses in 1796 ; Newport, R. I., 1,000 ; no other town be- 
tween Boston and New York, above 500 ; Albany, 1,100 ; Tren- 
ton, 200 ; Harrisburg, 300 ; New York City 40,000 people ; 
Baltimore 16,000 people ; Wilmington, Del., 600 houses ; Phil- 
adelphia, 50,000 people." 

The wharf at the. foot of 17th Street, mouth of the Tiber, 
was provided for as long ago as 1806. A warehouse to con- 
tain 600 hogsheads of tobacco was a feature of the city 40 
years ago, on square 801, Eastern Branch, as it is shown in 
old views of the city. 

We derive from the Commissioners' reports, in Adams's ad- 
ministration, the reason of the early failure of G-reenleaf, 
Nicholson, and Morris, the greatest purchasers of land and the 
ablest speculators on the site. 

This first report of the Commissioners says : 

"No sales took place deserving attention until the 23d 
December, 1793, when a contract was made with Robert 
Morris and James Greenleaf, for the sale of six thousand lots, 
averaging five thousand two hundred and sixty-five square 
feet each, at the rate of eighty dollars per lot, payable in seven 
equal annual installments, without interest, commencing the 
first of May, 1794, and with condition of building twenty brick 
houses annually, two stories high and covering twelve hundred 
square feet each, and with the further condition that they 
should not sell any lots previous to the first of January, 
1796, but on condition of erecting on every third lot one such 
house within four years from the time of sale. This con- 



FIRST LINE OF STAGES. 553 

tract was afterwards modified by an agreement of 24th April, 
1794, by which the payment of eighty thousand dollars, and 
the erecting the first-mentioned houses, should rest on the 
joint bond of the said Morris and Greenleaf, and of John 
.Nicholson ; and that one thousand lots should be conveyed to 
the said Morris and Greenleaf D, which was accordingly 
done." 

"Notwithstanding the favorable prospect which this trans- 
action for a time, afforded," say they to the President, " the 
scene soon changed. The purchasers not only failed to pay 
the installment which became due in May, 1795, but early in 
that year discontinued the buildings which they had com- 
menced under their contract, and on which very little progress 
has since been made." 

It was therefore determined to solicit the patronage of Con- 
gress, which was done in the year 1796, by a memorial from 
the Commissioners stating the affairs of the Federal Seat, 
in as clear a light as circumstances would then admit, and 
suggesting the propriety of authorizing a loan, bottomed on the 
city property, and guaranteed by Congress, if that property 
should prove deficient. Congress approved of the measure, 
and authorized a loan under their guarantee, to the amount of 
three hundred thousand dollars. It is needless to detail the 
fruitless attempts which were made to fill this loan with actual 
specie. The only loan which could be obtained was two 
hundred thousand dollars, in United States Sis per cent, 
stock, at par, from the state of Maryland, and for which the 
Commissioners were obliged, in addition to the guarantee of 
Congress, to give bonds in their individual capacities, agreeably 
to the resolutions of the assembly of that State, passed in the 
years 1796 and 1797." 

A line of stages was first established between Baltimore and 
Philadelphia only in 1782, and corporate roads had no exist- 
ence .before 1804. Hence, when Washington laid the corner- 
stone of the Capitol, September 18, 1793, and when John 
Adams passed through Baltimore to occupy the magistrate's 



554 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

house, June 15, 1800, the surroundings of the city were sylvan 
to the eye only. Steamers ascended to the city in Madison's 
administration ; the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, began in 
1828, was opened to Hancock in 1839, at a cost of above 
eleven and a half millions of dollars. Finally the Washington 
branch of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad was opened for 
travel August 25, 1835. It was not until 1851 that stages to 
the West were wholly suspended, and another competing rail- 
way to the North was not to be had until 1872, when the Bal- 
timore and Potomac railway was opened. Direct steam com- 
munication with upper Maryland is now (1873) about to be 
given to the District of Columbia by the Metropolitan branch 
railway, and to this day little packet steamers carry mails and 
passengers up to the locks of the Potomac four miles an 
hour. 

On the Fourth of July, 1800 — Independence Day — Oliver 
Wolcott, Jr., then Comptroller of the .Treasury, wrote thus to 
his wife, about the ancestral people of Washington and 
Georgetown : 

" There are but few houses at any one place, and most of 
them small, miserable huts, which present an awful contrast to 
the public buildings. Tlje people are poor, and so far as I can 
judge, they live, like fishes, by eating each other. All the 
ground for several miles around the city being, in the opinion 
of the people, too valuable to be cultivated, remains unfenced. 
There are but few enclosures, even for gardens, and these are 
in bad order. You may look in almost any direction, over an 
extent of ground nearly as large as the City of New York, with- 
out seeing a fence, or any object, except brick-kilns and tempo- 
rary huts for laborers. Mr. Law and a few other gentlemen, 
live in great splendor ; but most of the inhabitants are low 
people whose appearance indicates vice and intemperance, or 
negroes." 
■ " All the lands which I have described are valued, by the 

C superficial foot, at fourteen to twenty-five cents. There ap- 
pears to be a confident expectation that this place will soon 



JANSON'S VIEW OF WASHINGTON. 555 

exceed any city in the world. Mr. Thornton, one of the Com- 
missioners, spoke of 160,000 people, as a matter of course, in 
a few years. No stranger can be here a day, and converse 
with the proprietors, without conceiving himself in the com- 
pany of crazy people. Their ignorance of the rest of the 
world, and their delusions with respect to their own prospects, 
are without parallel. Immense sums have been squandered in 
buildings which are but partly finished, in situations which are 
not, and never will be, the scenes of business ; while the 
parts near the public buildings are almost wholly unim- 
proved. 

" I had no conception, till I came here, of the folly and in- 
fatuation of the people who have directed the settlements. 
Though five times as much money has been expended as was 
necessary, and though the private buildings are in number suf- 
ficient for all who will have occasion to reside here, yet there 
is nothing convenient, and nothing plenty but provisions. There 
is no industry, society, or business. With great trouble and 
expense, much mischief has been done which it will be almost 
impossible to remedy." 

Charles William Janson, an Englishman, who had been bitten 
in American speculations, thus describes the place about 1804 : 

" The entrances, or avenues as they are pompously called, 
are the worst roads I passed in the country, and I appeal to 
every citizen who has been unlucky enough to travel the stages 
North and South leading to the city, for the truth of the asser- 
tion. I particularly allude to the mail stage road from Bladens- 
burg to Washington, *and thence to Alexandria. In the Win- 
ter season, during the sitting of Congress, every turn of your 
wagon wheel is for miles attended with danger. The roads 
are never repaired ; deep ruts, rocks, and stumps of trees 
every minute impede your progress." 

" Arrived at the city, you are struck with its grotesque ap- 
pearance. In one view from the Capitol Hill the eye fixes 
upon a row of uniform houses, ten or twelve in number, while 



556 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

it faintly discovers the adjacent tenements to be miserable 
wooden structures." 

" Of the hotel so vauntingly promised to rival the large inns 
of England, the walls and roof remain, but not a window." 

" The frigate which brought the Sunisian Embassy grounded 
on the rocks below the city and the barbarians were obliged to 
be landed in boats." 

Janson then tells how the fever of speculation raged in 
Europe over the great city. 

" In London ,£500 sterling was, at one time, asked for a 
sixth-part of a single lot, many of the prime of which were 
originally purchased for .£20 at three years' credit." 

The same plain author, in his book (1806) shows that 
Washington was blamed for the choice of the site : 

" The Republican party insinuated that "Washington had 
pitched on a spot for the seat of government near his estate of 
Vernon, in order to enhance its value. This choice, I believe, 
was directed to one object only — the Capitol is built in the 
centre of the United States." 

" It can never become a place of commerce, however, while 
Baltimore lies on one side and Alexandria on the other." 

" Washington himself wrote as to the lotteries to build 
parts of the city : ' the whole Washington lottery business has 
turned out a bed of thorns rather than roses.' " 

Janson goes on to say that : 

" Strangers after viewing the offices of State, are apt to in- 
quire for the city, while they are in its very centre." 

" Many English artists, enchanted with the description given 
by interested writers, left their employ in order to exert their 
abilities in finishing this scene of contemplated magnificence." 

" Tippling shops and houses of rendezvous for sailors and 
their doxies, with a number of the lowest order of traders, 
constitute the Navy Yard, the only flourishing part of the town." 
Six frigates in ordinary, one in commission, and a small vessel 
of war were just launched at the time of his visit : 

" A long range of houses, called the twenty buildings at 



WASHINGTON AS SEEN BY EAELY VISITORS. 557 

Greenleafs Point, begun by Nicholson and others, first-rate 
speculators, are covered in, unfinished, and are dropping piece- 
meal." So they are to-day. 

" I never heard," said he, " of more than Pennsylvania and 
New Jersey Avenues in 1805, except after some houses had 
been uniformly built, in one of which lived Mr. Jefferson's 
printer, John Harrison Smith ; a few more of inferior note, 
with some public houses, and here and there a grog shop. 
This boasted Avenue is as much a wilderness as Kentucky ,with 
this advantage, that the soil is good for nothing. Some half 
starved cattle browsing among the bushes present a melancholy 
spectacle to a stranger. Quails and other birds are constantly 
shot within a hundred yards of the Capitol during the sitting 
of the houses of Congress." 

" Mr. Green and the Virginia company of comedians were 
nearly starved in the small place called a theatre, in the Penn- 
sylvania Avenue, during the only season it was occupied, and 
were obliged to go off to Richmond during the very height of 
the sitting of Congress." 

John Davis, a school master, who resided in America from 
1798 to 1802 has given like amusing testimony : 

" Washington" he says, " on my second visit to it, wore a very 
dreary aspect. The multitude had gone to their homes, and 
the inhabitants of the place were few. There were no objects 
to catch the eye, but a forlorn pilgrim forcing his way through 
the grass that overruns the streets, or a cow ruminating on a 
bank, from whose neck depended a bell, that the animal might 
be found the more readily in the woods." 

Extracts from the reports of the early Commissioners present 
some interesting facts : 

" The city owned an island of free-stone of immense value 
(at Acquia Creek). 

Mr. A. White (1796) was of the opinion that filling up 
some gulleys or ravines near the Capitol and paving the Penn- 
sylvania Avenue from thence to the President's house was all 



558 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

that was necessary to be done to the streets except clearing 

them of stumps and grubs, etc. 

******* 

A sale of water property of 3,500 feet front brought 816 a 
foot prior to 1796. 

jl". * fte. ti . .jtoi . sle." ■ . «!&■• f i jilfc ' f «fr 

7T> *F* ■*» ™ •v? 1* *T? 

The first engraved plans of the city and territory cost $370, 

the first bridge over the Tiber $788, the first bridge at James's 

Creek $342, and the first wharf (on the Eastern Branch) 

$1,017 ; the first bridge over Rock Creek cost $12,700.* 
******* 

The Lottery Commissioners to build a canal in 1802 were 
Notley Young, Daniel Carroll, Lewis Deblois, George Walker, 
Wm. Mayne, Duncanson, Thomas Law, and James Barry. 

As early as 1803 Mr. Bacon of Massachusetts moved reso- 
lutions to re-cede the district to the States which had given it. 
After two days' debate they were lost, — 66 to 26. 

In 1816, there were but 750 assessable persons in "Washing- 
ton, whose houses, land, and slaves were valued at $2,391,357. 
f Georgetown had 645 such persons better possessed m propor- 
i tion and Alexandria with 782 taxables was worth $3,259,901. 
) In the whole ten miles square, there were but 3,000 tax-payers. 
The population of all the Maryland side of the District, had 
i_been about 17,000 when the British invaded it. 

The only water used in the city for years was well-water, and 
to this day the Capital is supplied from the springs on Tiber 
Creek. The source of. Tiber Creek was estimated by Ellicott 
to be 236 feet above tide-water, or 158 feet higher than the 
base of the Capitol at the distance of two miles ; he designed 
at one time, to use Rock Creek for the source of permanent 
supply of the city. The highest ground in Washington within 
the city boundary is back of Massachusetts Avenue and is about 
103 feet above low tide. The base of the observatory is above 
six feet higher than the base of the Capitol, which is 89-J- feet 
above low tide. Lafayette Square is about 15 feet above low- 
tide water. 



THE NIAGARA OF THE POTOMAC. 



559 



The Great Falls are only 108 feet above tide-water, and can 
be relied upon for a supply of 36,000,000 gallons per diem. 
Andrew Ellicott first suggested the Great Falls as the source of 
the city's water-supply ; and sixty years afterward, Lieutenant 
Meigs confirmed his judgment. 

If this country had no Niagara, the Great Falls of the Poto- 
mac would be one of its most celebrated ornaments. It is 
astonishing to know how few people of Washington have ever 
visited it. The road to the spot leads over the gentle level of 
the great aqueduct, and is a ' = — - ■^a?? Blh95 ^ a c z^r" 
charming succession of sights, 
prospects, and lonesome 
stretches ; but the road is 
unfortunately unpaved, and, 
therefore, in wet weather, is 
hardly passable. A slow but 
agreeable way of getting to 
the Falls is by a quaint little 
steamer, which runs up the 
canal, carrying mails and pas- 
sengers to Point of Rocks, 
every alternate day. The the great falls of the potomac. 
locks on this canal are among the most magnificent in the 
world ; and the entire trip to Harper's Ferry, which consumes 
all the hours of daylight, is one of the most agreeable in our 
landscapes. It passes the Little and the Great Falls, the great 
arch over Cabin John Run, the Seneca quarries, the battle- 
fields of Ball's Bluff and Monocacy, and along the whole line 
of that haunted stream which seems to echo forever those deep 
and olden tones : " All quiet on the Potomac." 

There are eleven tunnels on the Washington aqueduct and 
six bridges ; the bridge over Cabin John now is a stupendous 
arch 220 feet span and 100 feet high. The reservoir covers 
eighty acres. 

The Great Falls itself is something of a canal-village. There 
is a large and commodious house for the Canal Company, and 




560 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

a storehouse and some shanties put up to accommodate laborers 
on the aqueduct. The canal and the creek must be crossed to 
get to the Falls, which are situated a quarter of a mile from the 
village. The Fall itself can be beheld from the rocky preci- 
pices which inclose it, in all the solemnity of nature and lone- 
liness. A series of strong and heady rapids fleck the wide 
river as it comes narrowing down to a 'Series of strewn rocks, 
some of them of formidable size. Between some of the great- 
est of these, the river tumbles in elbow-form, and, proceeding 
a few feet farther, dashes again into a dark gorge, surrounded 
with naked steeps, along which the firs and forest-trees are 
revealed in the back-ground, hemming in the" lonesome pool 
with stern and befitting foliages. Back of the Great Falls, on 
the Maryland side, are the villages of Offutt's Cross-Roads and 
Rockville, as well as a gold-mine which has produced several 
fine nuggets. On the Virginia side are the towns of Drainesville 
and Leesburg, and the beautiful Difficult Creek, which formed 
a feature in the War of Secession. 

Washington City, without reference to its associate towns in 
f the District of Columbia, remained nearly stationery in popu- 
\ lation between 1800 and 1810, with about 8,000 inhabitants. 
" The British did the place no permanent injury but rather rein- 
sured it to be the immovable seat of government, and by 1820 
Washington was enumerated at above 13,000 people. It missed 
^20,000 at 1830, and even at 1840 was a place of little above 
i23,000 people, but by 1850, it numbered one soul more than 
>40,000 and in 1860 contained above 60,000. In ten years more 
►there were 110,000 residents at the Capital, and all the rest of 
( the old District, including the discarded Virginia portion, could 
(jiot now add to the city above 40,000 more than it possesses. 
.The message of General Henry D. Cooke, May 28th, 1873, 
showed that $856,597 had been collected of taxes and 1619,000 
due. In the nineteen months preceding, the cash receipts had 
been $10,007,676 and the expenditures $9,913,716. The funded 
debt was $9,016,891 and the bonds of the corporation were 
held at 97 cents on the dollar. There had been 1216 buildings 



THE RAPID GROWTH OF THE CITY. 561 

erected in the city during the year 1872, valued at 13,209,250, 
and there had been 2,883 transfers of property. 

The bridge which precedes No. 3 over Rock Creek was a 
plank structure and that in turn was replaced by a bridge made 
of the refuse materials of the public buildings. 

When Hoban rebuilt the President's house the main portico 
was omitted until about 1831. About the same time a stable^ 
was proposed for the President. Mr. Bulfinch proceeded in 
1830 to plant the Avenue with forest trees. In 1871 the arch- 
itect, Mullet, diverted an appropriation into a new stable for 
President Grant, which caused some animadversion. 

There were eighteen burying grounds in Washington in 
1846 and but one modern cemetery, Glenwood. In 1873 there 
are half a dozen cemeteries besides national ones. 

One of President Harrison's first acts was to institute a 
commission of inquiry into what was feared to be a needless 
and extravagant expenditure of money upon the public works 
in the City of Washington. 

The only Presidents of the United States who are known to 
have bought property in Washington are General Washington, 
John Quincy Adams, and General Grant. Mr. Adams erected 
a commodious mansion still standing near Lafayette Square. 
General Grant disposed of his h juse, before he became Presi- 
dent, to his'successsor at the h ;ad of the army, General Sher- 
man. 

The Treasury building was : destroyed by fire in Jackson's 
administration, and he is said to have commanded Mills, the 
architect, to erect the new one in its present site, thereby con- 
cealing the White House from the Avenue. Mr. Mills was 
making strict measurements with instruments when Jackson, 
restive of delay, put down his walking stick and said : " Right 
here I want the corner stone ! " Jackson also ordered a pub- 
lic clock, the location of which had been a matter of debate, 
to be put up on the Treasury water-closet, and Mr. Mullet 
told me he took it down from that spot while building the 
extensions. 

36 



562 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

Seneca stone was used about the Capital at a very early 
period, and in 1828 there is a charge of $3,740 for it. Mr. 
Lee, the proprietor, charged fifteen dollars a ton, delivered. 
The stone was used for flagging and steps. 

The bill to build an aqueduct to carry the canal over the 
Potomac at Georgetown, was pressed in 1832, and met with 
much opposition from Georgetown, whose people alleged that 
the piers would ruin their harbor. 

Oldish, castellated, with queer, feudal-looking round towers, 
stands Georgetown College on the heights above the Potomac, 
with a deep funeral vale winding below, and the sprawling, 
shining, islet-sprinkled river brawling away right opposite. 

Georgetown College is the largest Jesuit college in the coun- 
try. The oldest part was built 1789, the main edifice in 1791. 
It was founded by John Carroll, first Archbishop of Baltimore, 
who renounced his interest in the Duddington and other estates 
when he became a priest in 1771. He was educated at Bohe- 
mia, Md., and St. Omer, Flanders. He gathered together the 
Catholics of Montgomery County and adjacent parts, while 
still in his youth, proceeded to Canada with Dr. Franklin, and 
Charles Carroll, his relative, to make an alliance for the Rev- 
olutionary Colonies, led a devout and beautiful life, and died 
Dec. 3, 1815, at Baltimore. In this College lived, for 'more 
than forty years after her husband's tragic death, the widow of 
Stephen Decatur, and his portrait hangs in the College. All 
the Carrolls of Duddington are buried there. The*institution 
possesses a large estate. 

Washington City has never propelled a satellite or accessory 
town, nor have any of the older villages in its vicinity grown 
by receiving sustenance from it, Baltimore only excepted. 
Bladensburg declined at the beginning of the revolution by 
the flight of the Scotch factor and agents who carried on its 
commerce. Alexandria, about 1798, was quite flourishing, but 
the capture of American vessels by the French in the West 
Indies, occasioned many failures. In 1803, the yellow fever 
broke out there. The town in 1803 had but two or three ships 
in the trade with Great Britain. 



A USELESS CANAL. 

As early as 1809 a company was incorporated to cut a c<- 
through the city of Washington to extend from the deep ria\ 
igation of the Eastern Branch, to the Potomac River, taking 
chiefly the course of the Tiber. No benefit was derived from 
this inefficient company, and in 1881 the city corporation pur- 
chased the right and interest of the Canal Company, in order 
to introduce the business of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal into ■ 
the city. The lock connecting this Corporation canal with the 
Chesapeake and Ohio, was placed at the foot of 17th street, 
beside the Yan Ness mansion, where the old stone lock-house 
is standing yet, in dilapidation and loneliness. Just below 
this lock, a large basin was formed at the outlet of the Tiber. 
A small island called Goose-Egg Island stood in tliis basin, and 
both canal and basin were walled with stone throughout the 
whole course. The Corporation Canal cost $225,000, and 
between 1836 and 1838 it was of some utility as far up as the 
market at Seventh street. Being a sewer and a stench, it has 
been filled up by the present Board of Public Works, and 
henceforward will show no trace upon the landscape of Wash- 
ington. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal has been of little use 
below Georgetown for several years. Above Georgetown for 
184 miles to Cumberland it is in active and useful operation, 
and probably will continue to be so with posterity. The average 
movement of freight by the Potomac Canal is now about 850,000 
tonnage, bringing a net revenue of upwards of 8200,000. The 
toll per ton of coal from Cumberland to Georgetown has gen- 
erally been 46 cents, and on grain $1.80 per ton. The canal 
has a debt of about $3,500,000. It cosl in ill, to deliver coal 
to vessel at Georgetown from the ce.il-field, $>2.13|- per ton, — 
wharfage standing at 35 cents. 

The Washington Navy Yard was provided for in 1804 under 
the encouragement of Mr. Jefferson Benjamin H. Latrobe, 
architect of the Capitol, designed its arched gateway. Within 
the yard are about 28 acres of ground surrounded by a strong 
brick wall ; an exquisite object on this wall is the sentry-box 
at one corner, which is built of brick in the style oi the feudal 



564 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

turret. This was put up during the war, when it became nec- 
ei -ay to guard enlisted seamen with carefulness. Here were 
ijuilt some of the best old vessels in the Navy such as the ships 
Wasp and Argus, the brig Viper, the Columbus, of 74 guns, 
the frigates Essex, Potomac, Brandywine, and Columbia, the 
schooners Shark and Grampus, and the sloop of war St. Louis. 

The corner stone of the old City Hall, now the United States 
and District Court building, was laid August 22, 1820. With- 
in it was deposited the following : 

" This corner-stone ol the City Hall, designed by George 
Hodfield, architect, was laid on the 22d day of August, A. D. 
1820, A. L. 5820, and in the forty-fifth year of the independ- 
ence of the United States of America, by Wm. Hewitt, P. W. 
G. M. of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of the District of 
Columbia ; James Munroe, President of the United States ; 
Samuel N. Smallwood, mayor of the city of Washington." 

And on the reverse side of the plate : 

" Commissioners for erecting City Hall — Samuel N. Small- 
wood, mayor ; R.. C. Weightman, William Prout, Thomas Car- 
berry, John P. Ingle." 

The orator of the day was John Law, Esq. Many notable 
trials occurred in this building, amongst which were those of 
Daniel G. Sickles, for the murder of Philip Barton Key, and 
of John Surratt for the murder of Abraham Lincoln. In 1873 
the United States Government gave the District $75,000 for 
its interest in this old freestone edifice, when it was determined 
to begin at once the construction of new municipal buildings 
on Market square. Mr. Law remarked at the laying of the 
corner-stone, that Washington then claimed 14,000 souls, and 
86,000,000 capital, and the corporation revenue was $40,000. 
Thirty miles of streets had been opened and improved^ and 
some turnpike roads and bridges opened. The Government 
had lent the town $100,000 in 1798, and $12,000 in 1800, both 
of which sums had been fully repaid with interest. 

The old market houses of the Federal City were destroyed 
in 1870-72, and the present elegant edifices built in their stead. 



THE NATIONAL OBSERVATORY. 565 

The longitude of the Capitol was determined in 1823, by 
William Lambert, to be 7-6° 55' 30". 54 west from Greenwich. 
General Washington had designed the meridian of the Capital 
to be the first meridian of the United States, and instructed 
Andrew Ellicott to record 0° 0' longitude and 38° 53' north 
latitude, in the original plan of the city. In 1809, Lambert, 
above referred to, a Virginian, memorialized Congress to take 
the longitude, and a committee reported in favor of the plan, 
but it lapsed until 1811, when Secretary of State Monroe gave it 
a good, if a diffident, word, and endorsed Mr. Lambert's patriot- 
ism. The indefatigable astronomer addressed as many of the 
assembled Congressmen as would hear him, and in 1812, Dr. 
Samuel L. Mitchell, of New York, reported in favor of a 
National Observatory. Not until March 3d, 1821, did the pro- 
position meet with its deserts. Different observations were 
made by Andrew Ellicott, 
Abraham Bradley, and Seth 
Pease ; but, in 1821, Lambert, 
commissioned as astronomer, 
resigned his station of inferior 
clerk in the Pension Office, 
took lodgings on Capitol Hill, 
and borrowed his instruments 
from the Coast Surveying 
authorities of that time. He national observatory, on obser- 

, t ' ., VATORY HILL. 

had a transit instrument, 

a circle of reflections, an astronomical clock, and a chro- 
nometer. William Elliot, a teacher of algebra and mathemat- 
ics assisted him. A large platform was erected to facilitate 
the work. The latitude was declared to be 38° 52' 45". Lam- 
bert made a copious report to Congress, and advocated a 
National Observatory. He may be named among the great 
clerks — and there are »many noble men in all departments of 
the Government — who have risen to eminence from a desk 
in the departments. 

In 1825, President J. Q. Adams advocated a National 
Observatory, and met with ridicule, and it was not until 




5QQ IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

1836 that Williams College became the pioneer observatory 
of the land. Finally both the Government and the Georgetown 
College built observatories. The longitude of the National 
Observatory on Braddock's hill is 77° 3' 2.4". 

The, third session of the 13th Congress, called by President 
Madison, to convene on the 19th of September, 1814, met in 
Blodget's old hotel, which Dr. William Thornton had, mean- 
time, made habitable, and turned a part of it into a repository 
of arts, models, and inventions, and he had succeeded, as well, 
in saving it from the torch of the British incendiary by whom 
it was doomed. At this time Dr. Thornton was a clerk, at 
$1,500 a year, in the State Department. 

Morse's Geography for 1812 describes Blodget's hotel ; it 
was 60 feet by 120 and about 50 feet high, with three stories ; 
it was built of brick, with a freestone basement. The old 
jail ol that day was 10 feet by 26, and two stories high, with 
low ceilings. The marine barrack, 300 feet long, and the War 
and State buildings, 120 feet front, were occupied. The yearly 
exports of the whole district were upwards of one million per 
annum. Georgetown had four churches and Washington three 
market houses. In 1810 a turnpike was incorporated by Con- 
gress from Mason's causeway to Alexandria. 

The turnpike company between Georgetown and Frederick- 
town was incorporated by the Maryland legislature, in 1812. 

The old poor-house of Washington stood on the elevated 
ground to the north of the old Post and Patent Offices. Not a 
vestige remains of those old buildings, where strangers from 
all parts of the Union, coming to prosecute claims and griev- 
ances and seek redress from the Government, often found 
their last hospitality on this earth. 

The old asylum of Georgetown still stands, and is a quaint, 
Flemish-looking structure of brick. 

The Treasury building was originally built between -1794 and 
1799, and in 1801 a fire swept part of it off. The British 
burned it in 1814, and it again began to arise three years 
later, and was not finished until 1823. Ten years later, on 
March 29, 1833, it was destroyed by fire again, and now its 



THE FALL AND RISE OF THE TREASURY BUILDING. 567 

architectural history, as we see it, began. In 1835, Robert 
Mills, of South Carolina, was appointed to supervise it, and in 
four -years he raised that fagade of columns which was the 
glory of his period, [and the exceeding annoyance of Mr. Mullet, 
a subsequent architect, who said that [it resembled a box of 
cigars, escaped as they stood on end in a long row. The old 
State Department long stood at right angles to Mills's fagade, 
where the north end of the Treasury extension now is. Mills's 
Treasury was finished in 1839. 

In 1855 the arrived potentate in classical architecture, 
Thomas N. Walter^, planned the extension of the Treasury. 
Instead of Virginia freestone, granite from Dix Island, Maine, 
was to be employed for these three great parts of the edifice 
remaining. Mr. A. B. Young, who is still a resident of the 
Capital City, living between the Treasury gate and, the Poto- 
mac, on Fifteenth street, was the architect following Mills, and 
he superintended the work and drawings for six or eight years. 
Next in immediate supervision came Mr. Rogers, architect of 
the Astor House hotel, New York City. Mr. Mullet, of Cincin- 
nati, a native of England, but a resident of the United States 
since childhood, completed the work, and in his headquar- 
^mi^ -, ; g5-..^^__ ; ^ ^^^ ters, in the basement of 

this Treasury, he subse- 
quently made the designs 
|! for the majority of the great 
~ ~zs Post-Offices, Custom Hous- 
K| es, Marine Hospitals, U. S. 
jjjjjj Courts, etc., in the country. 
I The south, wing of the 
m Treasury was completed in 
treasury building. 1860 ; the west wing in 

1864 ; and the north wing in 1869. This is the most costly 
of all our public buildings, considering its extent. It is 560 
feet, by nearly 273, including the porticoes and steps. - Its cost 
was more than half that of the far nobler Capitol. Mr. Mills 
long lived on New Jersey Avenue, Capitol Hill, in a cele- 
brated brick dwelling, with a peaked roof and sky-light. 




568 



IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 



The State Department at Washington was originally in a 
private dwelling and then on the site of the present Treasury. 
It was removed to an Orphan Asylum at the foot of Meridian 
Hill during the rebellion, and in 1872 the plans of A. B. 
Mullet were accepted for an edifice of granite to cost from six 
millions to eight millions of dollars and to accommodate at 
once the Departments of War, the Navy, and the State. The 
building was forthwith begun and will be finished about 1876. 
It is in the style of classical renaissance, the basement of Rich- 
mond granite and the superstructure of Maine granite. While 
superintending its construction Mr. Mullet was also erecting 
thirty-five other government buildings in various parts of the 
country. - 




UNITED STATES POST-OFFICE. 

The General Post-Office is said to have cost, in round num- 
bers, one million and a half. Its controlling masters were 
Meigs, Walters, and Edward Clark. It was commenced about 
the close of Pierce's administration, and at the outbreak of the 
civil war was finished only on the E street or rear wing where 
the chimneys stand and the rest was a Commissary storehouse. 
The architecture of the exterior is due to Mills, the correction 
and completion of the remaining two-thirds to Walters and 
Clark. The edifice was wholly occupied in 1866. 

The Post-Office extension was constructed of Kennebec, Me., 
and Woodstock, Md., granite at about 43 cents the cubic foot. 
The marble walls were of Lee and Baltimore granite ; the 



ACCOUNTS OF THE BUILDING OP THE VARIOUS BUILDINGS 569 

monolithic columns and their trimmings from Carrara, Italy, 
at $1,500 per column. Nearly all the work was done by the 
day. Captain Meigs superintended the work and Edward 
Clark, assistant superintendent, received $3 per diem. 

The office of Indian affairs was created by the Act of July 
9, 1832 ; the Treasury was given a Solicitor in May, 1830 ; 
the Post-Office obtained an Auditor in the Treasury in 1836. 
The Attorney-General of the United States was created Sept. 
24, 1789. The General Land Office was created April 25, 
1872, and made a section of the Treasury Department. 

In 1836, the records and models in the Patent Office were 
destroyed by fire, on the 15th of December. The following 




PATENT OFFICE — SOUTH FRONT. 

March, Congress made legislation compelling the recording of 
all patents and drawings, and models were in all proper cases 
demanded anew. The Patent Office goes back to 1790, and 
between 1793 and 1836 the Secretary of State issued patents 
subject to the revision of the Attorney-General. Above 9,000 
patents had been issued up to 1836, but the loose regulation 
led to many infringements and much litigation. William 
Elliott, writing in 1837 of the destruction of the archives of 
the Patent Office, said : " There lie the ashes of the records of 
more than 10,000 inventions with their beautiful models and 
drawings. There lie also, smouldering in the same heap of 



570 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

ruins, the elegant, classical correspondence of Dr. Thornton 
with the most of the ingenious and scientific men of this 
country and of Europe for upwards of 23 years." 

The Patent Office was the conception of two surveyors and 
engineers of Washington City who lived in the Jacksonian 
period, Messrs. Elliot and Town, the former of an English 
family notable in Washington for giving hints and doing con- 
scientious work. According to a legend amongst the architects 
of the city the plan was Town's, but as he left the firm the 
plan was usually named and accepted as Elliot's. The site of 
the building had previously been a nursery for trees and plants. 
In 1836, Robert Mills was made architect and he built the 
sand-stone portion on the P street side of Acquia Creek " free- 
stone." In 1851 Mr. Walters came to Washington, with the 
reputation of Girard College upon him, bringing Mr. Edward 
Clark as his assistant. Secretary of the Interior, S'eward,had 
become dissatisfied with Mr. Mills's work and he dismissed that 
gentleman, to the great ado of the period, and Mr. Clark was 
appointed to straighten out Mills's beginnings and make the 
windows face each other and the rooms assume some rectangu- 
lar form. The Seventh street side was the first marble part 
added, and the whole edifice was done in 1867. It cost $2,200,- 
000. The marble came from Cockeysville, Md. 

The second edifice of the State Department was occupied in 
1836, and it remained until the close of the civil war, but the 
great pile of the Treasury obliterated it. 

' Columbian College was commencedby Rev. Mr. Rice in 1819 
and chartered in 1821, the buildings erected and the institution 
opened speedily and its prosperity was exceptional until 1826, 
when its officers ran it in debt to the extent of $135,000. Then 
followed a pinching period, wherein the debts were mainly 
paid off, but the College lost its popularity. The Baptists have 
generally controlled it. 

Tbe present building of the Columbian Law School was the orig- 
inal Trinity Episcopal Church, third in the city in point of time, 
and was consecrated May 11, 1829. The Third Trinity Church 



BUILDING THE VARIOUS EDIFICES. 571 

was designed by Renwick, architect of the Smithsonian Insti- 
tute, and opened in 1857. This church is what is called " low" 
or ultra Protestant, and it was taken possession of by the 
Government during the war. 

Old Christ Episcopal Church points up its four little pinnacles 
near the Marine barracks. It was built about 1806 and the 
Society had been in existence since 1795. Jefferson and Madi- 
sgn were regular attendants of this church, and the Marines 
from the barracks formerly marched every Sunday to its min- 
istrations. The Congressional burying ground, otherwise 
Washington Parish Cemetery, belongs to this plain, crude little 
cottage-windowed edifice, which was the progenitor of nine 
other parishes in Washington City. 

The First Baptist Church, at I and 19th streets, was begun 
in 1803, and finished in 1809. In 1810 the Second Baptist 
Church was constituted near the Navy Yard. 

The Convent of the Visitation at Georgetown, was founded 
by Archbishop Neale, in 1798. The sisters of the order elect 
a mother superior every third year, eligible for only two con- 
secutive terms. 

The Academy of the Yisitation was established at George- 
town, about 1808. 

St. Patrick's Church, destroyed in 1873, was built in 1810 ; 
St. Peters, Capitol Hill, in 1821 ; St. Matthew's Church, in 
1839. 

The First Presbyterian Church, N Street, in the rear of Wil- 
lard's, was composed of persons who had belonged to the Asso- 
ciate Reformed Church, in Philadelphia, and removed with the 
Capital. It received a pastor in 1803, and the cpngregation 
first worshiped in the Treasury building. The Second Church 
followed, on Capitol Hill, and the Third, in New York Avenue, 
was instituted in 1820. At the latter Mr. Lincoln wor- 
shiped. 

The Methodist Church, in Georgetown, was built in 1806 ; 
the Navy Yard Methodist Church in 1810 ; the Foundry in 
1815. 



572 IMPKOVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

St. John's Episcopal Church was built from the gratuitously 
presented designs, and under the eye, of B. H. Latrobe. Orig- 
inally it was a Greek cross, afterward enlarged to the Roman 
form, and endowed with a tower. It was consecrated by 
Bishop Kemp, December 27, 1816. 

The old Unitarian Church, on Louisiana Avenue, was 
designed by Bulnnch, and was provided with a bell of 900 
pounds weight, cast by Mr. Revere, in Massachusetts. 

The Penitentiary of the district was established at Green- 
leaf's Point after 1830. 

It was 120 feet by 50, with 160 cells, surrounded by a wall 
300 feet square and 22 feet high. Charles Bulfmch designed 
it. 

The present jail was erected in 1841, near by its predeces- 
sor. A new jail is going up (1873) at the Eastern Branch. 

The Washington Arsenal was re-built in 1815, from the 
designs of Colonel George Bomford. Another structure, by 
Major W. Wade, succeeded this. 

In 1831 there were nine banks, in the ten miles square : 
Bank of Washington, $479,000 capital stock ; Metropolis, 
1500,000 ; Patriotic, $250,000 ; Farmers' and' Mechanics', 
$486,000 ; Union of Georgetown, $478,000 ; Alexandria,' 
$500,000; Potomac (Alexandria), $500,000; Mechanics' 
(Alexandria), $372,000 ; Farmers' (Alexandria), $310,000. . 

The debt of Washington City was about $800,000 in 1837. 

To the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal the State of Maryland 
subscribed $5,000,000 ; the United States, $1,000,000 ; Wash- 
ington City, $1,000,000 ; Georgetown, Alexandria, and the 
State of Virginia, $250,000 each. Ground was broken July 4, 
1828. 

The greatest freshet on the Potomac, of which there is any 
available record, occurred in 1852, raising the river at Chain 
Bridge 43 feet ; at Aqueduct Bridge, 10 feet ; and at the 
Arsenal 4 feet 9 inches. The flow of the Potomac river was 
gauged in 1863, above Great Falls, and found to be 1,176,000,- 
000 imperial gallons for twenty-four hours, exclusive of the 
supply required for the district. The canal has an available 



WASHINGTON HOTELS. 573 

fall, above Georgetown, of 34 feet, equal to 11,000 horse 
power. 

At the time of the Mexican war the leading hotels stood as 
follows, starting at the Capitol gate and going west : 

Gadsby's, Pennsylvania Avenue and Third street. 

Temperance Hotel, ) Third gtreet beMnd Gadsby's. 

St. Charles Hotel, i 

' ( Both on Pa. Avenue, between 3d and 4f. 
Veranda, ) 

Exchange, C street, between 4^ and 6. 

Coleman's, Pa. Avenue, between 4 1 - and 6. 

Brown's, .Pa. Avenue, between 6 and 7. 

Fuller's, Pa. Avenue and 14 st. 

European, Pa. Avenue,, between 14 and 15 street. 

During the Thirtieth Congress, the following notable men 
resided as indicated : 

Geo. M. Dallas, at Mrs. Gadsby's, President's Square. 

John C. Calhoun, Mrs. Read's, C Street, between 4£ and 6. 

Lewis Cass, Tyler's Hotel. 

John M. Clayton, Young's, Capitol Hill, N. J. Av. 

Jefferson Davis, Mrs. Owen's, Capitol Hill. 

Stephen H. Douglas, Willard's Hotel. 

A. H. Sevren, Hill's, Capitol Hill. 

Daniel Webster, Pa. Av., near 6th St. 

John Q. Adams, F street, bet. 13 and 14. 

Abraham Lincoln, Mrs. Sprigg's, Capitol Hill. 

At the time of the rebellion the leading hotels were as fol- 
lows : 

At Georgetown, the City Hotel and Lang's Hotel. 

On Pennsylvania Avenue, Willard's, Owen's, Brown's, 
National, Kirkwood, Henry Clay, Victoria. 

On Capitol Hill, Whitney's, Caspar's House. 

North of the Avenue, Hendon House, F Street ; Pennsylva- 
nia House, C Street. 
. The National Hotel was the first building in Washington, of 



574 



IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 



large dimensions, for public accommodation, a few rods from 
Brown's, or the Metropolitan. Brown's was the first t j estab- 
lish a bridal-chamber, and here Kossuth's compatriots went to 
bed with their boots and hats on,' after getting very drunk at 
the National. Clay died at the National, and Buchanan 
took the mysterious sickness there. At Brown's, James B. 
Clay, Henry Clay's son, was struck in the face by General 
Cullom, of Tennessee, and a bloodless duel ensued at Bladens- 
burg, in 1858. 




willard's hotel. 

The brothers Willard, of Vermont, had the latest house in 
the city when the war began, and they made a very advantag- 
eous lease of it. In their house the Peace Convention of 1861 
was held. That hall has been turned by Mr. Cake, the new 
proprietor, into a reading and music room, which will probably 
be the place recherche, as the young men with pale neckties put 
it, for soft and non-percussion theatricals. 

The present proprietor of Willard's belongs to the race of 
family magistrates, dignified, industrious, and agreeable as a 
Bishop. It is a great moral advance, if no more, to see the 



WASHINGTON HOTELS. 



575 



old, tawdry horse-racing race of inn-keepers disappear, and 
public men and their families, and patriotic folks who visit the 
Capitol, receive the entertainment of quieter and more demure 
and responsible hosts. Persons familiar with Washington 
hotels will be interested to hear that the new Willard's has a 
grand marble and walnut office, a billiard-room where the bar 
formerly stood, a ladies cafe over the office, where used to be 
" Camp Sykes " (a lumber room), and the long and gawky 
sitting-room has been dissected, and half of it made a ladies' 
promenade. 

The Arlington Hotel, on Vermont Avenue, is celebrated 
over the country for the elegance of its apartments, and the 
experience of its proprietors. -The hotel was built by W. W. 
Corcoran, Esq., and leased to Revesel and Sons,' of Lake 
George, for $40,000 a year. The waiters wear a uniform, and 
like all the four large houses of Washington, it contains an 
elevator. 




THE EBBITT HOUSE. 

The JEbbitt House is one of the largest and decidedly the 
best-looking establishment, architecturally, at the Capital. It 
arose during the war, and became celebrated as the favorite 
headquarters of army and navy officers, and was extended from 
time to time to meet the demands upon its popularity, until in 
1872, it was wholly reformed and reconstructed. It is now a 



576 IMPEOVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

very elegant mansion, six stories high and of a bright, cher •- 
ful color, which lightens the spirits of the guests ; from every 
window canopies of canvass depend to cool the interior through 
the Summer ; for this house, unlike several in Washington, is 
kept open the whole year round. The taste of the proprietor, 
Caleb C. Willard, Esq., is displayed in the elegant French pa- 
vilions, and broken lines of the roof, and in the series of clas- 
sical window mouldings, which liken the establishment to the 
purer class of the public edifices. The new dining-room is 
made to include two entire stories in height, and the lofty ceiling 
is beautifully frescoed, while the windows are given nearly the 
loftiness of the hall, thus bathing the apartment in the exquisite 
light of this latitude. Beneath the dining-room is the historic 
line of offices known over the whole country as " Newspaper row." 
The newspaper correspondents had pitched upon this block before 
a hotel was devised, on account of its immediate proximity to 
the telegraph offices, the Treasury, all the lines of city com- 
munication, and as it was centrally situated to the White 
House and the great departments. When the Ebbitt House 
was rebuilt the proprietor reserved the basement stage for 
newspaper offices, and for the length of the whole block,' lights 
can be seen shining at every night in the week, where these in- 
defatigable correspondents, representing the active press of the 
whole country, hang out their signs and feed the telegraph in- 
struments. On notable occasions, Newspaper Row is illumin- 
ated by its landlord. The Ebbitt House contains the largest 
rotunda and office in Washington ; it has an elevator and 800 
rooms, and there is not a prettier piece of architecture in 
Washington than its ladies' portico and rich bay window at 
the angle of the building. In this house have put up nearly 
all the eminent sailors and soldiers of the country : Rogers, 
Farragut, Worden, Canby, Thomas, Porter, Winslow, Boggs, 
Case, Drayton, and the rest. The Ebbitt House set the exam- 
ple of making a deduction for army and navy officers at the 
close of the war. It is the newest hotel production at the na- 
tional Capitol. » 



THE MILITARY HISTOEY OF WASHINGTON. 577 

Speaking of the army and navy hotel, suggests the capture 
of Washington in 1814, and the military history of the city. 

Washington had few military traditions, prior to the late 
civil war. Observatory hill was the camping and landing- 
ground of Braddock, Washington, and a part of the British 
army, April 11-14, 1775, and as Washington was at this time 
only 23 years of age, he may have paid especial attention for the 
first time to the beauty of the situation. A neck below Observ- 
atory hill was often designated by Peter Force, as Braddock's 
landing place. This hill was also designed to be the site of a 
fort, when the city was planned, and a brigade of militia en- 
camped upon it, August 23, 1814. During the Revolution, 
troops were almost constantly crossing Alexandria and George- 
town ferries. Fort Washington, on the Potomac, was origi- 
nally Fort Warburton, and at the time of the war of 1812, it 
was merely a water battery, with a block house on the hill 
above it, to protect it from being taken in the rear. This fort 
was built after the British war, and strengthened in 1861, when 
Fort Foote was also laid out by Major Alexander. Traces 
of breastworks exist at Whitestone point where the British 
vessels, retiring from Washington, were cannonaded. 

Here is a quaint item : 

July 10, 1814. General Wilkinson, temporarily suspended 
from command of the army, made a tour of the city in com- 
pany with General John Mason, of Mason's Island, and Charles 
Carroll, of Bellevue, to inform them of his plan, in the last 
resort, to repel a British surprise. It was as follows : Two 
redoubts, one in the fork of the Tiber and Potomac, the other on 
the height north of the Avenue called " Davidson's orchard ;" also 
the fortification of the Capitol and the President's house, in this 
way : Of the Capitol, by ravelins, to connect the two disconnected 
blocks (wings) and round towers of stone up the angles, with loop- 
holes to defend the extension-ends of the blocks ; the windows to 
be barricaded with loop-holes for musketry, and the lower floor of 
the Capitol, as well as the ravelins, to be sufficiently furnished 
37 



578 IMPROVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

with artillery, and the preparation of the President's house for 
the reception of musketry ; competent garrisons for the several 
posts to be detailed and held in readiness to occupy them, 
should it become necessary, and suitable munitions of war to 
be previously deposited in each. It was also practicable to ar- 
range for the defense of the Navy Yard. 

"Had these obvious, economical precautions been adopted," 
says Wilkinson, " the rival ministers, Monroe and Armstrong, 
would not have been exposed to the humiliation of advising 
General Winder, when he reached the Capital, to rally and form 
his troops on the heights in the rear of Georgetown." 

The total strength of the United States soldiery, of various 
sorts, at the battle of Bladensburg, according to William Elli- 
ott, was 8,049, of which 1,100 were regular infantry, seamen, and 
marines, and 540 Yirginia, Columbia, Maryland, and regular 
dragoons. The whole number of regulars, including seamen, 
was 1,240. The Americans had 20 pieces of field artillery. 
The entire British force, August 17, 1814, was 3,500, without 
artillery. 

This is sufficient to show that there were enough men on 
the American side to have defended the city, and to 
blame the Administration, was probably to put the dis- 
grace upon sacrificial shoulders. This is further attested by 
the miserably disproportionate loss of life on the American side, 
as estimated by the importance of the object to defend and the 
number of the defenders — only ten men were killed and thirty 
wounded. Lossing says twenty-six were killed and fifty-one 
wounded. It Was not believed by good observers on the field 
of battle, that the British brought up above 1,500 men. Their 
loss was nearly 500 killed and wounded.* 

The following buildings were destroyed by the British in 
1814 — the unfinished Capitol, the President's house, two build- 

*General Wilkinson's estimate is 64 killed and 249 wounded, on the British 
side, and 10 horses killed and 8 wounded. On the American side, 8 men killed, 
13 marines wounded. 



WASHINGTON DURING THE WAR. 579 

ings containing public offices, and the fort at Greenleaf s point, 
Mr. Se well's house on Capitol Hill, Mr. Carroll's hotel on Cap- 
itol Hill, General Washington's house and Mr. Frost's house, 
on the same elevation ; work-shops in the Navy Yard ; a sloop 
of war and public stores ; Fort Washington, and two bridges 
over the Eastern Branch. The British soldiers and the run- 
away negroes who attended them, plundered a few houses, 
amongst them Mr. A. McCormick's, Mr. D. Rapine's, and Mr. 
Elliott's. The types and presses of Gales & Seaton were cast 
out of the window. ♦ 

The Potomac was first crossed in the rebellion on the night 
of May 23, 1861,* in three columns at the Georgetown Aque- 
duct, the Long Bridge, and by water to Alexandria. The 
three columns were commanded respectively by Major Wood, 
Major Heintzelman, and Colonel Ellsworth. The first defences 
were laid out by General Mansfield, and Captain H. G. Wright 
next day at Forts Corcoran, Runyon, and Ellsworth. 

For seven weeks the work of defining and throwing up^ works 
went on, until the three forts named were built, and also Forts 
Bennett, Haggerty, and Albany. Fort Runyon exceeded any 
of the subsequent works. After the disaster of Bull Run, the 
works in Virginia were immediately connected, strengthened, 
and extended. By the beginning of the year 1862, there were 48 
forts in all, 23 south of the Potomac, 14 (and three batteries) 
between the Potomac and the Eastern Branch, and 11 forts be- 
yond the branch. The greater portion were enclosed works of 
earth, but several were lunettes with stockaded gorges. In Oc- 
tober, 1862, Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, took the responsi- 
bility of ordering new works, and he appointed a commission 
consisting of Generals Potter, Meigs, Barry, Barnard, and 
Cullum, to report upon those already completed. They reported 
ed 53 forts and 22 batteries with 643 guns and 75 mortars 
mounted, and demanding 25,000 infantry for garrisons, and 

* The hills of Maryland opposite Alexandria were filled with troops, and the 
gunboat Pawnee had been lying for weeks in the channel, when on the 24th of 
May that outpost of the rebellion was captured. 



580 IMPKOVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

9,000 artillery men. Enormously increased works were built 
in the early part of 1863, and three beautiful " semi-permanent 
field works" were those of Fort Whipple, Port C. F. Smith, and 
Fort Foote.* The whole system of works was strengthened 
in 1864, and in July of that year, Early advanced within sight 
of them and retired. 

The aggregate length of good military roads for the defences 
of Washington was 32 miles ; the circuit of defences was at 
least 37 miles. The Long Bridge was reconstructed by the 
enemy in 1861, and the railroad bridge beside it was built by 
the Engineers also in 1864. 

" The stone piers of the Aqueduct are works of the highest 
class of engineering, resting on bed rock 20 to 30 feet below 
the surface o£ the river." 

The hired labor force on the forts was at its greatest in 1863, 
— 1,500 men, wagons trains of 25 to 44 horse teams were used. 
The disbursements for hired labor and material, were all made 
by James Evelett, and amounted to more than one million of 
dollars. No compensation was paid land owners for injury, 
although a church, many dwellings, and many orchards were 
demolished. 

At the close of the war in 1865, Washington was surrounded 
by 68 inclosed forts' and batteries having an aggregate perim- 
eter of 13 miles, and a circuit of 37 miles, with 807 mounted 
guns, and 98 mortars and implements in all for 1521 guns. 
Compared with the Torres Yedras, constructed by Wellington 
from the Tagus to the sea, which cost £ 200,000, the works of 
Washington cost $1,436,000, and exceeded the former in length 
of circuit. The whole line from the Chickahominy Pine 
Works in 1865 was 32| miles long. 

The highest fort around Washington was Gains, 403 feet 
above mean tide. At forts Reno, Totten, and Lincoln, the 
heights are respectively 440, 330, and 230 feet above the tide. 
From Fort Meigs to Fort Stanton, the ridge is about 300 feet 
high ; the Theological Seminary back of Alexandria has an 
elevation of 400 feet above the Potomac. 

. * Fort Foote is still occupied (1872). 



THE GEOLOGY OF WASHINGTON. 581 

The geology of Washington is peculiar : at the head of tide 
water, it stands amongst the vertically stratified metamorphic 
rocks which, varying in composition from hard grains to soft 
mica slate, yield unequally to degrading action, and thus pro- 
duce the bold headlands and deeply excavated valley in which 
the land terminates at the margins of the Potomac. Overly- 
ing these, rocks is a series of nearly horizontal beds which 
form the various distinctive earth masses around Georgetown, 
Washington, and Alexandria. These peculiar sands and clays, 
with their fossil woods, belong to the older part of the Atlantic 
cretaceous formation. The underlying metamorphic rocks, are 
only exposed on Rock Creek, which took its name from them. 
Northwest of the city may be seen the material eroded over 
the sandstone of red Seneca, where the river once flowed 400 
feet higher than now. 

Few things even in our notable time have come up with more, 
suddenness than Washington City since the abolition of slavery^? 

At the close of the contest for a division of the country, it 
was inevitable that there should have been such an agitation 
for a change of the seat of government as followed the burning 
of the young city by the British in 1814. After sixty-five years 
of preparation Washington seemed to be still unfinished in any 
part. The Capitol was not done; the President's mansion was 
out of repair ; the streets were generally unpaved, and the 
social chaos following the war, had made old and new elements 
dissatisfied with their associations, and despondent about the 
site. 

Nothing seemed so necessary to Washington as a good fright- 
ening, and that it received through an authority sufficiently 
amusing at the present distance. 

A red-bearded, crippled, Quilpish looking man of St. Louis, 
Missouri, — by name Mr. L. Q. Reavis, — with a certain sense 
of resistance about him and an uncertain sense of reformation, 
took it into his head that St. Louis had been slighted and ought 
to be the Capital of the Government. He had a simple nature, 
a love of circulation and public consideration, and some hopes 



582 IMPKOVEMENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

of authorship. Perfectly honest, always approachable, always 
approaching, loose and continuous in argument, striking high 
for eminent attention, and carrying acquaintance by the assidu- 
ity with which he cultivated it, Mr. Reavis tested to extremities 
the power of the unit of citizenship to upset the Capital City 
and drag it away. His ingenuities were all in the noblest 
nature of destructiveness. He had very little to propose in 
the Way of reconstruction, and was indifferent whether the pub- 
lic edifice should be carried away piecemeal or abandoned to 
the unworthy people on the Potomac. But it happened at the 
moment that the strength of the dominant party in the West, 
the fever of change, the opening of the Pacific railroad and 
other lines to the extreme frontier, and perhaps more than all 
the rising agitation on the subject of free trade which the West- 
ern free traders hoped to settle in their favor by getting Con- 
gress amongst them, gave a noisy and it was thought a favora- 
ble celebrity to Mr. Reavis's scheme. Mr. Horace Greeley 
favored the removal in the New York Tribune, and a convention 
or two were held at St. Louis. The conservative sense, rever- 
ence and thrift of the nation prevailed, however, and Congress 
settled the question by voting a large sum of money to begin 
a grand State Department at Washington which should cost 
several millions. The city itself at its own expense put on a 
new apparel, and the national appropriations of 1872-3 were 
unusually generous and even excessive. 

After the peace of 1865 a little timid- building began about 
the city, led by A. R. Shepherd, a native of the District who 
had made some accumulations while the armies and hospitals 
centred here, by conducting plumbing and gas fitting on a large 
scale. He put up several Philadelphia rows of brick houses 
adjacent to the old Duddington house of the Carrolls and also 
erected the first business edifice of consequence on the lower 
side of the Avenue. His architect was Mr. Cluss, a German, 
whose domestic architecture has given Washington a style of its 
own. He designed the central market house, the Franklin, 
Jefferson, Wallack and other public schools, and the dwellings of 



ARCHITECTS OF THE VARIOUS BUILDINGS. 583 

Jeffreys, Hutchinson, and other new arrivals. Walter S. West, 
a Virginia architect, showed his skill in the transformation of 
the old Crawford property on Highland place and in the eleva- 
tion of the residences of Mr. Sclienck and Senator Stewart. 
Ploughman and Starkweather of Philadelphia designed the 
Freedman's bank, the Young Men's Christian Association Halls, 
and the quaint row of dwellings which are occupied by Speaker 
Blaine, Fernando Wood, Senator Buckingham, and Thomas 
Swann. The Howard University and the large modern man- 
sion of George Taylor on Vermont Avenue, were designed by 
Mr. Searle of Rochester, N. Y. Vernon Row, an elegant busi- 
ness block on the Avenue, was the plan of architect Frastsr. 
Mr. A. Grant of Wisconsin, designed the block of lofty brick 
on East Capitol street. A Baltimore architect planned the 
little opera house near the central market and the Arlington 
hotel. Marshal Brown's and Mr. Thompson's brown stone 
houses on I street were by F. G. Myers, a German. Edward 
Clark designed Merrell's and Edmunds' neat houses on Massa- 
chusetts Avenue. Prominent builders in this new period are 
Robert I. Fleming of Va., W. H* Baldwin, Entwistle and Bar- 
ron, and Edmonstone. 

It has been mentioned in another chapter that the territorial 
government expended from ten millions to fourteen millions in 
1872 ; three new bridges were thrown across Rock Creek ; 
three large market houses were partly finished ; a new city 
hall was designed ; a reform school was begun ; new railroads 
and depots were added ; new school houses built and the entire 
system of street paving, sewerage, -parks, suburban roads, and 
street railways reformed and made metropolitan. Destiny 
seems to be against. the city in the matter of commerce and 
manufactures. Factories do not flourish here ; the great glass 
works near the observatory which were so long successful have 
fallen into decay, but rural gardening has taken the start and 
it is to be hoped that some day Washington will be fed from 
the fields within sight of its hills. 

In 1871, when the project for the removal of the Capital was 



584 IMIEOVEM.ENTS IN WASHINGTON. 

rife in the Western country, two members of Congress, John 
Coburn, of Indiana, and Pliiletus Sawyer presented a minority 
report in favor of the scheme. Their energies came to naught, 
but we are indeLted to them for extracting from the Treasury 
Department a very complete statement of the cost of Wash- 
ington City and of the District to the taxpayers of the United 
States. These ■ have amounted in gross to above forty-five and 
one-half millions of dollars in three quarters of a century. 
To make this grand total every possible appropriation and in- 
vestment in the District was brought out, inclusive of several 
uncompleted edifices,, some of which will not be wholly built 
until about 1876. Bj that time we may safely assume that 
the expenditures of the Federal Government in the district 
will have been hard upon sixty millions of dollars. 



CHAPTER XXXIY. 



a recoed of historic events in the district of columbia from 
1621 to 1873. 

This chapter is believed to be the first compilation of his- 
toric events in the District of Columbia yet made in any vol- 
ume. Later works may make the list more perfect, but the 
labor has not been light nor the sources of information easy of 
access in the preparation of this table : 

THE DIARY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 

1621 (?) Henry Fleet ascends the Potomac to the site of 
the District and engages in battle with the " Nacostine Indians," 
(Anacostans). Twenty English killed; Fleet held prisoner 
five years. 

1632. Henry Fleet despatches his brother Edward to the 
Monocacy country with presents to buy peltries from the pow- 
erful Magsomacks ; Henry Fleet waits with his barque, War- 
wick, in the vicinity of Georgetown. , July 3d, Edward Fleet 
returns from a five days' journey. August 28th, Fleet arrested 
for trespass by Captain John Uty, and carried to Jamestown. 

1634. March 5th, Leonard Calvert enters the Potomac with 
the ship Ark and the pinnace Dove, and two hundred colonists. 
Calvert and Fleet ascended the river in the Dove to Piscataway. 
March 27th, St. Mary's founded. 

1695. Prince George's county erected by act of the Mary- 
land Assembly. Settlement of "New Scotland" established 

near the Potomac and Anacostia. 

585 



586 HISTORIC EVENTS. 

1740 (?) An inspection house for tobacco established at the 
mouth of Rock Creek. 

1742. John Digges establishes Copper "Works in the vicin- 
ity. 

1748. Frederick County erected out of parts of Prince 
George, Anne Arundel, and Baltimore. 

1751. Georgetown authorized to be laid out by an act of 
Assembly of Maryland in" eighty lots comprising sixty acres 
of land, — six years after Fredericktown was laid out. 

1755. March 26th, General Braddock arrives at Alexan- 
dria overland from Williamsburg. 

April 12th — 18th : The Forty-eighth British regiment, sea- 
men, teamsters, and vessels of Braddock's expedition assembled 
at Rock Creek. Proceed to Fredericktown, three day's march. 
Braddock rides the same course. 

1758. The capture of Fort Duquesne in the autumn of this 
year brings back the frightened settlers of Frederick County 
and permits the country above Georgetown to be settled up. 

1774. August. The brigantine " Mary and Jane" arrives 
in St. Mary's river with packages of tea consigned to merchants 
in Georgetown and Bladensburg. The patriotic " committee " 
of Frederick County refuse to allow it to be landed. 

1774. December. Convention of patriotic deputies of 
Maryland meeting at Annapolis assessed Prince George's 
County £833 for arming the militia; Frederick County 
£1,333. \ 

1775. April 28th. News of the battles of Lexington and 
Concord (April 19th) reach Georgetown in the afternoon. 

1775. May. Captain Thomas Richardson, a Rhode Island 
Quaker, musters an independent company of Marylanders in 
Georgetown ; the parade ground was on the brink of Rock 
Creek, near the present canal locks: In this company were 
General Lingan and General James Wilkinson. 

1775. July 26th. Frederick County divided for convenience 
into three districts, upper, middle, and lower. 

1776. February. The Public records of Maryland moved 



I 

) 

HISTORIC EVENTS. 587 

from Annapolis to Upper Marlborough, three hours' ride from 
Georgetown. 

1776. June- -July. Lord Dunmore's war vessels appear in 
the Potomac and threaten the plantations. 

1776. June 27th. Frederick ordered to furnish nine com- 
panies out of thirty-six for the "flying camp," and Prince 
George's three. 

1776. September 6th. The patriotic convention by a vote 
of 30 to 22 refused to postpone the division of Frederick County. 
Montgomery County, from which the future District of Colum- 
bia was to be partly taken, was therefore created. And the 
same day the county of Washington was defined and named* 
The commissioners appointed for Montgomery County were 
Nathan and Zadock Magruder, John Murdock, Henry Griffith, 
Thomas Cramphin, Jr., Allen Bowie, and John Wilson. These 
men bought four acres of ground by order of the convention to 
establish a court-house and prison (Rockville). Thirteen hun- 
dred peunds, common money, were permitted to be assessed for 
this purpose. 

1776. October 11th. The freeholders and inhabitants of 
Prince George's County who live west of the Eastern Branch 
of the Potomac petition the convention " to be annexed to the 
lower district of Frederick, now Montgomery County, and to 
have their Court house and other public buildings erected in 
Georgetown." 

1776. November 8th. The election for Montgomery 
County ordered to be held at Hungerford's, the judges of the 
same being John Murdock, Zadock Magruder, and Joseph 
Wilson. 

1777. Father John Carroll establishes himself at his moth- ^ 
er's house, " at Rock Creek, ten miles from Georgetown " and ^ 
makes it " the centre of a vast Roman mission." 

1784. December 22d. Convention at Annapolis, George 
Washington presiding, to confer upon the improvement of the 
upper Potomac river. Books opened at Georgetown by William 
Deakins and Benjamin Stoddert ; 42 shares taken there out of 
403 in all. • ' 



588 HISTORIC EVENTS. 

1785. May 17th. The " Potomac Company " meet at Alex- 
andria ; August 1st, at Georgetown ; October 18th, 1785, Board 
meet at Great Falls. Work begun with hired negroes and 
Philadelphia immigrants, 160 in number. . 

1787. June 2Jth. Shares offered at auction at Stuter's 
tavern, Georgetown ; no bids. 

1789. Thomas Johnson succeeds Washington: directors 
George Gilpin, John Fitzgerald, Thomas S. Lee, Notley Young. 
'The company existed 36 years and spent $729,380, and expired 
July 1822. 

1788. Father Carroll commences to rear Georgetown college ; 
opened for pupils 1791 ; Leonard Neale Superintendent, 1799. 

1789. May. Father John Carroll elected Bishop of Balti- 
more; ratified at Rome Nov. 6th. 

/ 1790. July 16. The President at Philadelphia signs the 

I bill to place the seat of government on the Potomac. 

\ 1791. January 10. Washington accepts the District. 

1792. French nuns of the order of St. Clare open a school 
at Georgetown ; sold to Bishop Neale 1805 ; June 9, 1808, 
transferred to the Nuns of the Yisitation, Alice Lalor, Supe- 
rioress. 

1793. Sept. 18. The corner stone of the north wing of the 
Capitol laid. . 

1795. President Washington visits Georgetown college 
unattended, and is taken through it by the Jesuit Fathers. 

1797. A bridge built at Chain bridge : " We must needs go 
and view the famous bridge — it is amazing to see the river so 
contracted that a stone could be pitched over where the bridge 
stands. This is three miles above Georgetown: from the 
bridge upwards there is a good road cut out of the rocks." — 
Bishop Francis Asbury's Diary. Nov. 3, 1797. 

1799. Death of Washington at Mount Vernon. 

1800. November 22. President Adams sends his message 
to Congress at the capitol : " May this territory be the resi- 
dence of virtue and happiness ! In this city may that piety 
and virtue, that wisdom and "magnanimity, that constancy and 



HISTORIC EVENTS. 589 

self-government which adorn the great character whose name 
it bears be forever held in veneration ! " 

1802. Establishment of the Washington race course on 
Holmead's farm. 

1802. May 3. Washington city incorporated; supplement- \ 
ary act 1812; new charter 1820; municipality abolished 1871.^ 

1804. Navy yard established. 

1809. Company incorporated to cut a canal through the 
city ; purchased by the city 1831 : cost $225,000. > 

1810. Population, 8,308. J 
1812. April 20. George Clinton, Vice-President, died at 

Washington, and was buried at the Congressional cemetery. 

1812. July. The Federal Republican, anti-war newspaper, 
established at Georgetown after being driven from Baltimore by 
a mob. The "sheets are carried to Baltimore to be distributed 
and in the riots which follow General Lingan is killed and 
many others slain or beaten. (" Georgetown, 25th July, 1812, 
A. C. Hanson Esq. The bearer carries you the paper which 
he will deliver by daybreak. God send you success and glory 
in case of an attack. J. Wagner.") 

1813. July 13. Admiral Warren's fleet enters the Poto- 
mac, and halting at Blackstone's island sends up light vessels 
to sound the kettle bottoms. Mr. Monroe plans an attack at 
Blackstone's ; Mr. John Armstrong takes control of Fort Wash- 
ington. — John Mason of the District of Columbia, is appointed 
Commissary General of prisoners, and will also have the super- 
intendence of aliens. 

1813. September. Admiral Warren leaves the Potomac. 

1814. June 1-8. Commodore Barney's flotilla blockaded 
in the Patuxent. The enemy again in the Potomac. July 26, 
the blockading ships bombarded and retire. 

1814. July 26. President Madison calls a Cabinet Council 
of war on the defence of Washington. 

1814. July 16. " The door of Washington, Annapolis, is 
wide open, and cannot be shut with the few troops under my 
command." — Greneral Winder's letter to the Secretary of War. 



590 HISTORIC EVENTS. 

1814. August 1. In camp at Washington 1,000 regulars, 
and 4,000 enrolled militia. 

1814. August 16. The British fleet, heavily reinforced, 
ascend the Potomac and the Chesapeake simultaneously. 

1814. August 18. Five thousand British regulars, marines 
and negroes go up the Patuxent to destroy Barney's flotilla. 

1814. August 22. Barney's flotilla of 13 barges blown up. 

1814. August 23. Skirmish at Long Old Fields. 

1814., August 24. "Battle of Bladensburg. Destruction 
of the Capitol. 

1814. August 25. The British retire, and re-embark Au- 
gust 30. 

1814. August 27. Fort Washington blown up; August 29 
Alexandria occupied. 

1814. September. The British fleet passes ^batteries at the 
White House. 

1814. Nov. 13. Elbridge Gerry dies in his carriagei n the 
streets of the city. Buried at the Congressional cemetery, and 
as Vice-President of the United States received the honor of a 
monument from Congress which Cost $1,000. 

1815. June. Another steamboat to ply on the Chesapeake. 
(President Madison retires to Acquia creek by steamer at the 
conclusion of his term.) 

1817. July.* The new steamboat, Virginia, pMes between 
Baltimore and Norfolk as a packet. " A very large and 
staunch boat, elegantly fitted, which cost $55,000." 

1819. Branch of the Bank of the United States established 
at Washington ; circulation $647,602. 
4 182 °- Population, 13,232. 

1821. There are 1,200 lawsuits and a litigious spirit every- 
where in the District. 3 

1821. " To John Satfford, as usual, we are indebted for a 
statistical account of the progress of buildings : 88 buildings 
were commenced up to June, a new bridge put over the Tyber, 
the Centre Market enlarged, much progress made in' the City 
Hall, an addition made to the Infirmary, the new theatre fin- 



HISTORIC EVENTS. 591 

ished, and the old one rebuilt for assembly rooms, Unitarian 
church erected and a Presbyterian church completed, -and a 
fountain of water opened that yields sixty gallons a minute. 
Deaths in 1821, 355, in October the greatest number, 84." 

1822. January 9, Columbia College inaugurated. The 
first bell erected in the city for public purposes raised in the 
Unitarian church tower, Oct. 11. Ten thousand persons see 
the race between the Virginia horse Sir Charles and the Vir- 
ginia horse Eclipse. A million and a half were said to have 
been bet ; and 800 slaves in one instance to change hands. 
Eclipse walked over the track and his owner got the stake, 
$5,000. " Many bet large sums upon it who were unable to 
pay their honest debts to mechanics, grocers, and even washer- 
women. The next day a match was made for $20,000 a side 
to run Eclipse against any Northern horse over a Long Island 
course. The Long Island race run May 1, 1823; won by 
Ellipse. Stake $10,000 ; time 12 miles in 23 minutes, 50£ 
seconds. 

1823. February. M. de Bresson, Secretary of the French 
legation, married daughter of Mr. Thompson, Secretary of the 
Navy. 

1823. March. The contractdr of the " Grand National 
lottery" refuses to pay the prize of $100,000 and many smaller 
ones and left the city. The corporation of Washington claim 
not to be responsible. Intelligencer says in capital letters : "So 
we go." 

1824. Singular reputed miracles at Georgetown attributed 
to the prayers of Prince Alexander Hohenlohe ; amongst the 
cures that of Mrs. Anne Mattingly, sister of the Mayor of 
Washington. 

1825. Antonio Meucci offers to paint the battle of Yorktown 
for the Capitol at the same price as offered by Col. Trumbull. 

1825. National exhibition of manufacturers held in Washing- 
ton. The last of the 29 columns for the eastern portico raised in 
September. 

1825. Dec. 23. Fire in the library of the Capitol. 
h-c^'j- ■-'■' 



592 HISTORIC EVENTS. 

1825. " John Sessford's annual statement"* 1 : a frigate and a 
sloop of war building at the navy yard ; deaths during the year 
225 ; 15 stores and 67 dwellings put up. Washington Gazette, 
published by John S. Meehan, changes its name to United 
States Telegraph. 

1826. ■ National Journal says: " 840,000 appropriated for 
two public schools ; $20,000 for city hall ; $3,000 for enlarg- 
ing Centre market. A steamboat is about to ply from the 
wharf at the Centre market to Alexandria. Postmaster Gen- 
eral McLean says that the mail steamer to Potomac Creek is 
very irregular since it began some years ago." 

1827. Built 123 dwellings, 25 shops. Deaths 251 ; popula- 
tion 17,448. 

1828. March 23. Death of Colonel John Tayloe of Mount 
Airy at the Octagon House. 

1828. Correspondents of Northern newspapers make allu- 
sions to ladies at Washington : " The female character is too 
gentle and refined for this British fashion." — Bait. American. 
Masonic processions to welcome De Witt Clinton, April 29, 
services at St John's church. 

July 4. The President, J. Q. Adams, digs the first spadeful 
of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal at Little Falls. Three 
steamers and many barges go up from Georgetown. Present, 
foreign ministers, cabinet, military, etc. Three new churches 
created ; and an orphans' asylum. 

1829. The officers' quarters at Marine barracks destroyed. 

1830. Dec. 7. The first number of the Q-lobe appears. 

1832. The sum of $62,000 appropriated by Congress for 
paving Pennsylvania Avenue, and $40,000 for more water 
pipe to the Capitol. Cholera in the city ; many fatal cases. 

1833. " A contemplated granite bridge across the Potomac of 
43 arches said to have been let by contract for $1,400,000. 
Some bids were as high as $7,500,000." 

1834. The North American, Van Buren paper, established. 
1834. Feb. 18. William Wirt expired at his lodgings, 

soon after his defeat as the Anti-Masonic candidate for the 
Presidency. 



HISTORIC EVENTS. 593 

1833. The Treasury buildings were supposed to have been 
burned by an incendiary. 

1834. A riot broke out in the city and lasted several days, 
caused by some alleged remarks of a prominent free negro, 
Snow, upon the white ladies. 

1835. Early in September the African church at Washing- 
ton attacked by a mob. 

1835. August 25. Washington branch B. and 0. railroad 
opened after ten years' labor. Maryland subscription $500,- 
000 ; one-fifth gross passage money to go to the State. 

1835. October 1, The Long Bridge, one mile in length 
was crossed by the President and heads of departments in car- 
riages for the first time. It had 2,000 solid feet of embank- , 
ment ; and cost $100,000, or one-third less than the appropri- 
ation. Its engineers were George W. Hughes and A. B. Mc- 
Lean, and the contractors Alanson Sumner and Stephen Clark 
of New York ; the bridge was not generally used until the 
Spring of 1836. Jackson City, was devised the same year. 

1836. Autumn. The passenger stage fell through the 12th 
street bridge into the canal, killing a boy. 

1837. Niles register was removed to Washington. 

1837. The gate of the Capitol fronting Pennsylvania Ave- 
nue was opened in 1837 and all the lodges built about that 
time. 

1838. February. A duel between Graves and Cilley, mem- 
bers of Congress, occurred, the parties meeting at the Anacostia 
bridge on the road to Marlborough about 2 o'clock, P. M. 
There were on the ground, Graves, Cilley, Wise, Jones, Cal- 
houn, Hawes, hack-drivers, the land owner and several loiter- 
ers. Cilley killed. 

1839. The Treasury edifice was drawing near cmnpletion, 
the foundations of the General Post-Office going up, the present 
jail up one story (size 100 feet front, 50 deep, 40 high) and 
the Alexandria Court House ready for the roof. 

1840. " The National Institute was organized with 85 resi- 
dent members ; the population of the city was 22,177. 



I 



594 HISTOBIC EVENTS. 

1841. July 31. The statue of Washington by Greenough 
arrived on the ship " Sea" at the Washington navy yard ; it 
was raised on its pedestal in the rotunda Dec. 1, 1841. 

1841. The venerable Joseph Nourse died at Georgetown 
Sept. 1. He was born in London, 1754, and was first register 
of the Treasury from 1789 to 1829. 

1841. February. Amos Kendall begins the publication of 
his Expositor. 

1841. April 4. President Harrison expires at the White 
House. 

1842. September 10. Mrs. Tyler, wife of the President, 
died at the White House, after twenty-nine years of wedded 
•life. 

1843. March 4th. Congress at midnight session votes 
$30,000 to put up the Morse telegraph from Washington to 
Baltimore ; put in operation in 1844. 

1843. The Intelligencer reported that there were 4,938 
houses in the city, and $10,00,0,000 assessed property; 325 
houses had gone up in the year. 

1844. March 1. Four hundred people went to visit Com- 
modore Stockton's ship, the Princeton^ lying off Alexandria. 
The Princeton proceeded below Fort Washington, and was re- 
turning, when a gun throwing a ball of 225 pounds, burst, kill- 
ing Mr. Upshur, Secretary of State, Mr. Gilmer, Secretary ot 
the Navy, Commodore Kennon, Virgil Maxey, late of the lega- 
tion at the Hague, and ex-State Senator Gardiner, of New York. 
Seventeen seamen were wounded and many people stunned. 

1844. The population was 30,426 ; between 1820 and 1845, 
about 11,500 shops and buildings had been erected. 

1844. President Tyler, at the age of 54, brings a new 
mistress into the White House — Miss Julia Gardner, daughter 
of one of the victims of the explosion on the Princeton. 

1846. August 31. The people of Alexandria county voted 
for retrocession from the District, aye 763, no 222. September 
7,1846, President Polk pronounced the act complied with. 
The people living in the County outside of Alexandria, had 



HISTOEIC EVENTS. 595 

flags with mottoes, " What Washington has done, let no 
one undo." " There was some admirable speaking on the hust- 
ings." 

1846. Decatur disinterred. Every lineament of the face 
was gone. Nothing remained but a few fragments of the 
dress. Major Twiggs superintended the disinterment. 

1847. August. Admiral Cockburn died in Shanganah, near 
Bray, county Dublin, aged 84. 

1848. One hundred and thirty-six houses were erected in 
Washington, making 5,922 in the city. 

July 4, 1848, the corner stone of the Washington Monument 
was laid in the presence of Mrs. Madison, Mrs. Hamilton, and 
many others. 

1848. February 23. J. Q. Adams died in the Speaker's 
room at the Capitol. 

1848. April 19. The steamboat Salem overhauls the 
schooner Pearl, Edward Sayres, captain, Daniel Drayton, 
charterer, in Cornfield Harbor, with 77 fugitive negroes on 
board, belonging to Georgetown. The National Era mobbed. 
Peter Force, Mayor, pro tern. Drayton sentenced to pay 73 
times |140, and Edward Sayres 73 times $100. Pardoned, 
August 12, 1852. 

1850. The Southern Press established at Washington. 

• 1850. Mr. Calhoun died in the Old Capitol block, March 
31, aged 68 years. 

1851. April 22. Archbishop Eccleston, fifth Archbishop 
of Baltimore, expires at Georgetown College. President Fill- 
more attends the funeral. 

1851. July 4. The corner stone of the Capitol extension 
laid by Millard Fillmore ; Daniel Webster orator. 

1852. December 24. Fire in the Library of Congress, at- 
tended with the destruction of 35,000 volumes and many med- 
als, pictures, etc. 

June 29. Tuesday, at the age of 75, Henry Clay expired, at 
the National Hotel. 

1852. . In the spring of this year, the Young Men's. Chris- 
tian Association of Washington was formed ; in 1868 its large 



596 HISTORIC EVENTS. 

building, enclosing " Lincoln Hall," was built; in 1873 it 
numbered 963 members. 

1853. Dr. Charles John Gardiner, convicted of perjury at 
the prosecution of the United States. He takes poison in the 
court room and dies in a few hours. 

1854. January. The Papal Nuncio, Cajetan Bedini, is a 
guest of the French Minister. Much excitement and bigotry 
of discussion. 

1854. January 23. Death of M. de Bodisco, at George- 
town, after seventeen years' service as Minister of Russia. 
Wedded to a Georgetown lady. 

1856. May 22. Assault on Mr. Sumner by Preston S. 
Brooks. Brooks died in the city, Jan. 27, 1857. Aged 37. 

Hebert fined $300 for the murder of Thomas .Keating. 

1857. June 1. Bloody riot at the municipal election 
between Baltimore Know Nothings, and Democrats. The ma- 
rines called out and are fired upon by the rioters with cannon. 
The fire returned, and the people lose six killed and about 
twenty wounded. 

1857. Organization of the Columbia Institution for the deaf 
and dumb. 

1858. Senator Thomas H. Benton dies at his residence on 
C street, near 4f , aged 76. 

1858. The Mount Yernan Estate purchased by a patriotic as- 
sociation, from John A. Washington, for $200,000 for 200 acres. 

1859. Feb. 27. Philip Barton Key shot and killed by Dan- 
iel E. Sickles for the seduction of Mrs. Sickles. 

1859. Members of Congress, English and Montgomery, have 
a street fight with canes and brickbats. 

1859. October 17. Colonel Lee leaves Washington at the 
head of the marines to capture John Brown's band at Harper's 
Ferry. 

1860. April. A month of ruffianism in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, with rows, rallies and challenges. Challenge be- 
tween Pryor of Virginia and Potter of Wisconsin. 

1860. Oct. 3-7. The Prince of Wales in Washington; 
visits Mount Vernon. 



HISTORIC EVENTS. 597 

1860. Dec. 3. At noon, Dr. Gurley of Washington, opens 
the Senate with prayer. Ditto the House by Rev. Thomas H. 
Stockton. Buchanan's message received. 

Dec. 12. Lewis Cass, Secretary of State, resigns. 

1860. Dec. 20. M. R. H. Garnett, announcing in Congress 
the secession of South Carolina, says Virginia will not be respon- 
sible for the bonds of the Pacific Railroad, then under discussion. 
Boyce and Ashman draw their pay to the last, and leave for 
Charleston. Secession cockades worn publicly in Washington. 

December 24. Frauds to the amount of $870,000 com- 
mitted on the Interior Department. Mayor Barrett surrounds 
the building with his police. 

December 29. Floyd, Cobb, and Thompson resign. 

December 26. Barnwell, Adams, and Orr, commissioners 
from South Carolina, arrive at the Capital and stop at Tres- 
cott's house, 352 Franklin Row, K street. 

1861. Jan. 4. Mrs. Robert Anderson passes through 
Washington to join her husband in Fort Sumpter. Returns 
Jan. 9, and stops at Willard's Hotel. 

1861. Jan. 5. The South Carolina Commissioners leave 
the city. Cockades of both zones blossom in hundreds of hat- 
bands. Captain Charles P. Stone organizes the militia and 
troops in the district. Fourteen Senators, amongst them Jef- 
erson Davis, caucus in Washington, to form themselves into a 
directory, and take control of the South. 

1861. Jan. 12. The Gulf State Congressmen and Sena- 
tors begin to withdraw from Congress. 

Jan. 21st. Jefferson Davis withdraws. 

February 4th. Slidell and Benjamin withdraw. 

1861. Feb. 4. The Peace Convention meets at Willard's 
Hall, on F st., John Tyler presiding ; adjourns March 1st. 

1861. Feb. 23. President Lincoln, accompanied by Ward 
Lamon and Norman Judd, arrive at the Washington depot, at 
daylight, and are received by Elihu Washburne ; he goes to 
Willard's Hotel, where Mr. Seward meets him. 

On the 27th, the Mayor and Council wait on tlie President- 
elect. 



598 HISTORIC EVENTS. 

1861. March 4th. Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Buchanan, in a 
carriage, with Senators Pearse and Baker, proceed to the 
Capitol, flanked by troops on the parallel streets. Chief-Jus- 
tice Taney administers the oath. 

1861. March 5. Three Confederate Commissioners arrive, 
and stop at Willard's. 

1861. April — . Mayor James G. Barrett arrested. 

1861. April 13. The Virginia Commissioners meet the 
President. 

1861. April 18. The Cassius M. Clay battalion organized 
at Willard's Hall, and given arms to patrol the city. The 
Capitol and Treasury guarded by howitzers. Five volunteer 
companies from Pennsylvania and forty regulars arrive at the 
depot, in all 530 men. They are quartered in the House of 
Representatives ; the same evening Harper's Ferry armory 
destroyed. 

1861. * April 19. The Massachusetts Sixth arrives. 

1861. April 20. Seizure of telegraph despatches, followed 
by the weeding of the disloyal out of the Departments. 

1861. April 21. Robert E. Lee leaves Arlington House 
for Richmond, to offer his services to the State of Virginia. 

1861. April 25. Arrival of the Seventh New York Regi- 
ment ; two other regiments arrive next day. 

1861. May. All the public buildings filled with troops and 
the Glacis converted into bakeries. 

1861. May 1. Lieut. Tompkins raids through Fairfax Court 
House. 

1861. May 11. Washington severed from the North by 
the burning of bridges north of Baltimore. 

1861. May 18. A Confederate flag seen on the Virginia 
heights. 

1861. May 25. Colonel Ellsworth's body embalmed at the 
Navy Yard. 

1861. June 16. Confederate soldiers seen at Chain Bridge 
and High Point ; Vienna and Falls Church occupied. 

1861. . July -1. A special session of Congress is held. 



HISTOEIC EVENTS. 599 

1861. July 9. One hundred and sixty-one millions appro- 
priated to carry on the war. 

1861. July 15. McDowell's army advances. 

1861. July 21. All the horses and vehicles in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia seized to bring in the wounded. Hospitals 
improvised. 

1861. July 25. McClellan makes headquarters in Wash- 
ington, at the head of 50,000 infantry and thirty pieces of 
cannon, the city fortified, and the army recruited and reorgan- 
ized. 

1861. October 1st. The Potomac blockaded for nearly six 
months after this date. . 

1861. October 15. The city circumvallated by earthworks ; 
seventy thousand men armed and disciplined ; the Potomac 
picketed from Liverpool Point to Williamsport ; great reviews 
in September and October, opposite Washington. 

1861. October 17. The Confederates again fall back to 
Centreville. • . 

1861. Oct. 25. General Baker's dead body brought from 
Ball's Bluff to Washington. 

1861. Dec. 20. Fight at Drainsville, near Washington. 

1862. Street railroad laid on Pennsylvania Avenue. 
1862. March 10. McClellan advances to Manassas and 

Warrenton Junction. 

1862. April 1st. McClellan descends the Potomac, leaving 
18,000 men in garrison, and 20,000 in Virginia around Man- 

1862. June 28. General Pope takes command of the 
forces before Washington, and takes the field July 29th. 

1862. Sept, 1st. Battle of Chantilly, and return of the 
army to the fortifications of Washington. 

1862. Sept. 4th. The Confederates cross the Potomac 40 
.miles above Washington. 

1862. Sept. 7th. The Army of the Potomac, 87,000 
strong, moves north of Washington. Battle of Antietam. 

1862. Dec. 31st. Burnside recalled to Washington, from 
before Fredericksburg, and removed from his command. 



600 HISTORIC EVENTS. 

1863. Jan. 1. President Lincoln proclaims emancipation 
from Washington. 

1863. Washington Fire Department organized ; it consist- 
ed in 1873, of five steamers, six hose carriages and two trucks, 
a fire-alarm telegraph and twenty-eight horses. Annual ex- 
pense $80,000. 

1863. Mar. 8. John S. I^osby dashes into Fairfax and 
captures Colonel Stoughton ; the Confederate draft enforced 
in counties opposite Washington. 

1863. June 16. Hooker's army, defeated at Chancellors- 
ville, falls back to Fairfax. 

1864. July 6. The Sixth Corps, under General Ricketts, 
passes through Washington northward. 

1864. July 9th. The battle of Monocacy, for the defence 
of the city, with a Federal loss of 2,000. 

1864. July . 12th. Battle at Silver Springs, with a loss of 
600 men on each side ; Early re-crosses the Potomac. 

1865. April 10. President Lincoln returns to Washington 
from Richmond ; the city illuminated. 

1865. April 14. General Grant arrives. 

1865. April 15. Death of Mr. Lincoln, at the house of 
Mr. Peterson, opposite Ford's theatre. 

1865. May. Grand review, for two days, of the armies of 
Grant and Sherman. 

1865. July 7. Mrs. Surratt, Payne (or Powell), Herold, 
and Atzerodt hanged in the yard of the old penitentiary, 
Greenleaf s Point. 

1865. Nov. 10. Henry Wirz, the Andersonville jailer, 
hanged, in the rear of the house where Calhoun died, and 
which was called " The old Capitol." 

1865. Dec. Only 35 votes are cast in favor of negro suf- 
frage in the District ; 7,369 against. 

1866. June 3. Calvary Baptist Church dedicated ; burned 
December 15th, 1867. 

.1867. March 7th. President Johnson vetoes the District 
of Columbia suffrage bill, but it is passed over the veto by more 
than two-thirds ol each House . 



HISTOEIC EVENTS. 601 

1869. December 24. Death of Edwin M. Stanton, at his 
home, on Franklin square. 

1869. Completion of the Howard University for freedmen. 

1871. Feb. 20, 21. Grand Carnival and Masquerade on 
the completion of the wood pavement on Pennsylvania Avenue 
from the Treasury to the Capitol ; the same day the President j 
signs the bill making a Territorial Government for the District : 
of Columbia, with a Governor and Council, a House of Dele-' 
gates and a Delegate in Congress. 

1872. Opening of the Baltimore and Potomac, and Washing- 
ton, Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railroads. 

1872-3. Complete rehabilitation and reformation of the 
city, at a cost to the taxpayers of eight millions, and to the 
Government of four millions. Commencement of the new 
State Department. 

1873. May 12. Salmon P. Chase interred at the Oak Hill 
Cemetery, Georgetown. Services in the Capital. 

1873. May 26. Opening of the Metropolitan branch rail- 
road to Point of Rocks. 



CHAPTEE XXXY. 



SOCIAL SKETCHES OF THE OLD AND NEW IN WASHINGTON. 

If we ever have a literature in America, much of it must 
illustrate the government and collateral society at the national 
capital. Many agreeable pens have been at work jotting down 
the materials for this work, and it would be an oversight in our 
book to say nothing of the old families and the new in the city 
by the Potomac. . , 

It is already hard to realize with precision* and picturesque- 
ness the state of social life and living which existed in the 
early days of our Capital. The city has found it necessary in 
the course of improvement to take out of the landscape many 
familiar forms and vistas which will belong to the biographer, 
novelist, and poet of that great period in letters which must be 
approaching. 

Amongst the local landmarks of the District of Columbia 
which have been recently obliterated in the leveling processes 
of the new corporation, are the mound and stone to mark the 
centre of the ten miles square, set up by Andrew Ellicott, in 
1791. Gen. Babcock said he thought it was merely the base 
of a derrick to hoist things to the Washington Monument. 

The other landmark was the Van Ness Mausoleum, in which 
was buried David Burns, the Scotch farmer who owned the 
ground on which the most popular part of Washington stands. 
This fine old relic (see cut below) was taken down in the latter 
part of 1872, to give room for a new alley. It stood between 

(602) 



A QUAINT TALE. 603 

the Church of the Ascension and an Orphan Asylum, on H 
street near Ninth, — the ground for both of which was presented 
by Mrs. Van Ness, or Marcia Burns, daughter of the Scotch 
farmer aforesaid. 

As to this family there is a quaint tale which may be worth 
telling : 

David Burns was a farmer at the river-side behind the Pres- 
ident's Mansion, who had been fortunate enough, under thedaw 
of primogeniture prevailing in the Province of Maryland, to 
inherit his father's property, to the exclusion of his kin. He 
was a positive bid fellow, and annoyed Washington very much 
when the President sought to " locate the Capital City upon 
his farm." "The obstinate Mr. Burns," as Washington called 
him, will be the subject of portraiture often in the future, stick- 
ling for the largest equity and conditions, and paying little 
relative respect to the opinion of the General, whom he once 
declared to be of eminence chiefly on the score of having mar- 
ried the rich widow Custis. 

Burns had a daughter, as well, whose prospective wealth in 
Washington city-lots was to make another man historic. This 
was Marcia Burns, a fairly-educated, fair-looking, clear-headed 
young woman, the only child of the crusty David. When the 
Congressmen settled on the agueish site of the new city, and 
found the distances ' too magnificent for patience, they sought 
relief from poor lodgings by visiting the Carrolls, Cal verts, 
Taylors, Laws, Peters, Lloyds, Keys, and others ; and imme- 
diately there was a courteous contest for the hand and fortune 
of Davy Burns' child. The Congressmen filled the long, low, 
one-story-and-garret farm-house of nights, and the most assid- 
uous and good-looking of them all was John P. Van Ness, of 
New York. They all besieged Miss Marcia Burns, and she 
followed the rule of choosing trumps when in doubt. She 
beamed upon the handsome Dutch member. 

John P. Van Ness was now past 30, and the son of a celebra- 
ted New York anti-Federalist and Revolutionary officer, Judge 
Peter Van Ness. His father was. a supporter of Aaron Burr 



604 



SOCIAL SKETCHES. 



against the Livingston and Clinton interest ; and William P. "Van 
Ness, his brother, " that talented man, of dark and indignant 
spirit," as Jabez Hammond says, was Burr's second in the duel 
with Hamilton, and afterwards secreted Burr in the family home 
of Kinderhook, where subsequently Irving wrote a part of his 
Knickerbocker's History, and Martin Van Buren raised cab- 
bages and smiled on Nature. • 

The elder Van Ness sent Aaron Burr, recently United States 
Senator, to sound the young woman Burns, and ascertain the 
degree of her worldly wisdom and her father's worldly pros- 
pects. Burr, always plastic in match-makings, reported in an 
exalted strain upon Miss Marcia's strength of mind and prob- 
abilities, and thus Columbia County, New York, and the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, united their leading families. 

The groom had been educated at Columbia College, New 
York, and was of such 
equal spirits, that, till 
death, he retained all 
his popularity in 
Washington, and 
"filled all the high 
offices that the citi- 
zens of Washington 
had the power to be- 
stow upon him." His 
bride was equal to her alliance, and kept a tender memory in 
Washington long after her obstinate father was laid in the 
Cave of Macpelah. 

For a little time the bridal party inhabited old Burns's cot- 
tage, still standing at the foot of Seventeenth street. Next, 
Mr. Van Ness built a two-story brick house on the corner of 
Twelfth and D streets. The city lots selling well, and money 
being unstinted, Van Ness next erected, right beside old Burns's 
cottage, a great brick mansion, still perfect, and inhabited 
now by Thomas Green, the son-in-law of the elder Ritchie, the 
celebrated Richmond editor,, This great house was designed 




MARCIA BURNS. 



VAN NESS. 



THE YAN NESS MANSION. 



605 



'by the architect Latrobe, and it cost about $50,000, upwards 
of half a century ago. The country-place of the bridal couple 
"vras meantime the " Glebe," situated in Virginia, not many 
miles from "Washington, where they possessed 1,500 acres, part 
of which is now owned by Caleb Cushing. In 1865 the man- 
sion on " The Glebe" burned down. 




VAN NESS MANSION, AND DAVY BURNS'S COTTAGE. 

It is customary to refer to Burns as a common old fellow, 
but he appears to have used the first moneys derived from the 
sale of his land and lots to educate his daughter in a manner 
to fit her for the exalted company expected on the site of his 
farm. Seven or eight years elapsed between this good, fortune 
and her marriage. 

A copy of the funeral discourse of Rev. William Hawley, 
(Nicholas Callan's copy), rector of St. John's Church, deliver- 
ed on the occasion of the death of Mrs. Yan Ness, 1832, is in 
possession of W. H. Philip, Esq. Parts of this discourse say 
as follows : 

" She survived her only child, Mrs. Ann E. Middleton. 
Born on the spot on which she expired, the whole of Mrs. Yan 
Ness's life had been passed in witnessing the beginning, the 
rise, and progress of this flourishing metropolis. She was 
placed by her parents in the family of Luther Martin, Esq., of 



606 SOCIAL' SKETCHES. 

4 

Baltimore, who was then at the height of his fame as the m«st 
distinguished jurist and advocate in the State of Maryland, and 
with his daughters and family she had the best opportunity of 
education and society.* At the age of twenty she was married 
to the ' present worthy mayor of our Capital.' 

" In early life," continues the clergyman, " she had great 
sprightliness of mind and amiableness of disposition. The se- 
dateness of her manner gave her dignity, and the genuine piety 
of her heart became her rule of life, when her daughter had been 
born and educated. This daughter returned from boarding- 
scliool at the time the splendid dwelling on Mansion square was 
prepared for the reception of the family. Leaving the cottage 
which stands at hand, and under whose humble roof she had been 
born and nurtured, Mrs. Yan Ness witnessed the subsequent 
marriage of her daughter. But in November, 1822, the bride 
who had been but a few months before ' attired in nuptial 
dress, adorned with jewels and surrounded with gay attend- 
ants,' plighted her vows, was consigned, with her infant, to 
the grave. 

" From this period Mrs. Yan Ness seemed to have bid the 
world and all its gaieties farewell. She endowed an orphan 
asylum with $4,000 in real property, left it by will $1,000 — 
the legacy an old friend, widow of Governor Blount, of North 



* Lutlier Martin married, a daughter of Col. Cresap, of Maryland, long the 
reputed slayer of the family of Logan, the Indian chief. Martin was a shiftless 
genius, who had been born at New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1 744, and re- 
moved, in 1762, to the little Eastern shore Maryland, part of Queenstown, 
where he studied law and taught school until 1770. He was a protege pf 
Judge Samuel Chase, and in 1778 became Attorney-General of Maryland, dis- 
tinguishing himself by prosecuting tories." In 1804 he defended Judge Chase, 
in the unfinished capital, Burr presiding, in a speech pronounced " wonder- 
ful " at the period. In 1807 he defended Aaron Burr, at Richmond, and 
lost his popularity in Maryland for years. Intemperance grew upon him, 
and he became, at last, a guest of Burr's banished years, and died in 1826. 
Chief Justice Taney describes him as a rambling talker, with slovenly 
rhetoric, using vulgarisms, but fair and weighty in argument, and wearing 
ruffles at the wrist, richly edged with lace, but dabbled and soiled, and with 
rich clothes unbrushed, and intoxication often paramount. 



SKETCH OF THE HEIRESS. 607 

Carolina, — and labored with Congress for its further endow- 
ment of $10,000. She attended the church and Sunday School 
in this church constantly, and sought out orphans with a 
mother's yearning. The old cottage house in which she was 
born and in which her beloved parents ended their days, was 
an object of her deep veneration and regard. In this humble 
dwelling, over whose venerable roof wave the branches of trees 
planted by her dear parents, she had selected a secluded apart- 
ment, with appropriate arrangements for solemn meditation, to 
which she often retired, and spent hours in quiet solitude and 
holy communion. Her sickness was long and painful. A few 
days before the end she celebrated the sacrament with a few of 
her Christian friends around her bed. She bade all the several 
members of the family an affectionate farewell, and on parting 
with her dear husband, while he kneeled by her dying bed, she 
said, with her hand upon his head : ' Heaven bless and protect 
you ; never mitid me.' " 

The funeral took place Monday, September 10, at 4 P. M. 
The mahogany coffin was covered with black velvet, and orna- 
mented with a silver plate, on which was engraved her name, 
the day of her birth, marriage, and death. A leaden coffin was 
inside the wooden one. Another plate, the gift of citizens who 
had held a meeting of condolence at the " Western Town 
House," referred to her piety, charity, and worth, and it was 
fastened on the coffin, " a little below the former." It told 
the story thus : " Born 9th May, 1782. Married 9th May, 
1802. Died 9th Sept. 1832." 

The Mausoleum had been erected some years previously. 
Her hearse and family carriage (coach and four) were dressed 
in mourning. Little female orphans, in divided ranks, march- 
ed to the bier and strewed it with branches of the weeping 
willow. 

A poem in the Globe, by H. G., (Horatio Greenough ?)$ 

said : * 

" Mid rank and wealth and worldly pride, 
From every snare she turned aside. 
****** 



608 



SOCIAL SKETCHES. 



She sought the low, the humble shed, 
Where gaunt disease aud famine tread. 
And from that time in youthful pride, 
She stood Van Ness's blooming bride, 
No day her blameless head o'er past, 
But saw her dearer than the last." 

After Van Ness had been a Bank President, Militia Com 
mander, and what not, he died several years after his wife. 
He had provided a tomb, unrivaled in the New World, a copy 
of a temple of Vesta, where the Burns and the Van Ness alli- 
ance should be monument- 
ally inurned. This tomb was 
constructed of stone, and 
was an open dome, with stone 




VAN NESS MAUSOLEUM. 



pillars, and a deep vault be- 
neath it, eight feet in depth, 
with three tiers of cells, six 
cells to the tier. Mr. Edward 
Clark, architect of the Cap- 
itol, told Col. W. H. Philip, 
who recently removed and set up the Mausoleum, that it was 
one of the few tombs strictly monumental in the country, 
and that the material in it, and the fashioning of them, would 
cost, at the present time, $34,000. They took the structure 
down, and have re-built it precisely as it was, in Oak Hill 
Cemetery, Georgetown. Underneath it they found seven 
bodies, viz. : 

1. David Burns, — a few bones, and a skull and teeth, and 
the relics of an old-fashioned winding-sheet, which wrapped 
the defunct around and around, as if afraid he might get out 
of it, as out of some other bad bargain. - The undertaker of the 
latter part of the nineteenth century looked at this winding- 
sheet as if he were stumped at last. It was too much for 
him. . 

2. Mrs. Burns, wife of David. On this lady history is 
silent. 



THE VAN NESS FAMILY. 609 

3. Gen. Van Ness. A fine old body, who sued the Govern- 
ment. of the United States for violating its agreement with the 
original proprietors of Washington in the matter of selling to 
private purchasers lots near the Mall. He was beaten, although 
he had Roger B. Taney for counsel. He gave an annual en- 
tertainment to Congress, and his six horses, headless, are said 
to gallop around the Van Ness mansion annually, on the anni- 
versary of his death. 

4. Marcia Van Ness, heiress of Washington. Mrs. Van 
Ness's portrait is at the Orphan Asylum, and at Colonel 
Philip's residence ; a sweet, thin Scotch face, with gleaming, 
dewy eyes, crowned with a lace. cap. 

5. Mrs. Ann E. Middleton, only child of John P. and Marcia 
Van Ness ; married Arthur Middleton, son of a signer of the 
Declaration of Independence ; she died in childbirth, and Mid- 
dleton married for his second wife a daughter of General Ben- 
tevolia, of Pome. 

6. General Montgomery, a relative of the family. 

7. Gov. Cornelius P. Van Ness, ex-Collector of the Port of 
New York, Chief Justice and Governor of Vermont, and for 
nine years Minister to Spain. He was the father of Mrs. 
Judge Poosevelt, of New York City, and of Lady Ouseley, wife 
of Sir William Ouseley, Secretary of the British Legation, who 
was married at the Van Ness mansion. 

The square on which the Mausoleum stood sold for $160,000 
not many years ago, and the proceeds went to the Bente- 
volia alliance. 

The heirs of John P. Van Ness were three, in equal 
parts : 

1. One-third to Mrs. Philip, whose son is W. H. Philip, 
Esq., of Washington City. 

2. One-third to Gov. C. P. Van Ness. 

3. One-third to the heirs of Judge W. P. Van Ness, Burr's 
friend. 

Of this celebrated estate there are still many lots in the pos- 
session of the heirs of the above. 
39 



610 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

General Van Ness lived down to the period of the Mexican 
war, attaining the ripe age of seventy-six. He became the 
first President of the Bank of the Metropolis in 1814. Several 
portraits are extant of him. In one he is represented as wear- 
ing a powdered wig and toupee with very light, fine, brown hair 
and side- whiskers, with a short forehead, and strong perceptive 
brows, very full and memory-keeping, a fine, aquiline nose, 
straight lip and chin, and small mouth and a fine, hazel, open 
eye with brown lashes and eyebrows. A handsomer man, a 
woman, nor a novel reader never looked upon. There is a lus- 
cious, Dutch look about that portrait Gilbert Stuart painted of 
Van Ness which does not fail to account for his success with 
Miss Burns. He left no will and never made one. The toast 
after his death was, " well fed, well bred, well read : we never 
shall look upon his like again !" 

William P. Van Ness, brother of the Mayor, was ako a 
striking-looking man of larger intellectual development than 
General Van Ness, but of less pleasing expression ; he enjoyed 
a larger area of career than the Mayor. The Van Nesses were 
said to be descended from Aerd Van Ness of West Vriesland, 
Lieutenant Admiral of Holland. 

Amongst the episodes of the old Van Ness mansion is the 
story of Ann G. Wightt, well known in her day as " sister Ger- 
trude." 

She was a cousin of Mrs. Marcia Van Ness, and of a Mary- 
land family. A young and beautiful child, she was sent to 
school at Georgetown Convent, and while her parents were 
absent in Europe she became enamoured of the ideal convent 
life and took the veil. She is said to have risen to such con- 
sideration that she was talked of as Lady Superioress. When 
about thirty years of age she slipped on the dress of one of the 
monks or fathers, and one evening, left the Convent by stealth 
and was driven to the Van Ness mansion, where she claimed 
the protection and hospitality of John Van Ness on the score 
of cousinship. A day or two after she arrived, two priests 
called at the house and demanded to talk with her. She 



THE LAST OF THE VAN NESS MANSION. 611 

answered them from the head of the stairs that under no cir- 
cumstances would she return to the Convent. It was never 
known why she had taken flight, but she became the reverse 
of a recluse and was a gay and brilliant woman in society, but 
she never married. Amongst her intimate acquaintances at a 
later period was Isis Iturbide, a daughter of the Emperor of 
Mexico, who left Miss Wightt a legacy of $10,000, and the lat- 
ter had the sagacity and perseverance to go £0 the city of Mex- 
ico and obtain the money while the other Iturbides got little or 
nothing. She was notable for her splendid black, flowing hair, 
superb teeth, and great conversational power. She died at the 
residence of Honorable John Y. Mason in Richmond, a short 
time prior to the civil war. 

The Van Ness Mansion made its last public appearance in 
the Assassination Conspiracy when its affable and inoffensive 
proprietor, Mr. Green, was put into a military prison upon a 
newspaper rumor that the mansion was to have been used as a 
place of incarceration for President Lincoln preparatory to his 
removal to Virginia by stealth. It is a noble old property, and 
when the Board of Public Works or whatever is responsible 
hereabout arranges Seventeenth street and fills up the canal, the 
ride around this mansion up the shaded river side to Braddock's 
Rock anc] Samp Hill will be one of the best in Washington. 

A word on the subject of the original proprietors of the site 
of Washington. To their titles all deeds for property in the 
Federal city date, and I spent an hour looking them over one day 
recently in the Room of the Commissioners. 

The Carroll estate was divided into " New Troy," 500 acres, 
Duddington pastures 481 acres, and Duddington Manor 497-£ 
acres. St. Thomas bay entered the Manor from the Eastern 
branch and St. James's creek, behind it, separated Duddington 
pasture from Notley Young's farm of 400 acres. East of Dud- 
dington, and nearer the Navy Yard was " Houp's addition," laid 
out for Madame Ann Young by Jeremiah Riley and his father, 
Eliphas Riley in 1757. Part of the same was resurveyed for 
Charles Carroll, Jr., in 1759 and called ' Cerve Abbey Manor.' 



612 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

The dwelling (70x22 feet), great smoke house, spring house 
and brick stable (95) at Duddington were erected after the city 
was laid out. A log house and a frame hen house in the cor- 
ner nearest the Capitol were on the square previously. 

Robert Peter's log mansion house (86x22), quarters and 
outbuildings stood on the square between 13th and 14th streets 
west of W and boundary, Tjgfe ( 

Mr. Young's mill (36x24), stood between 1st and ,2d streets . 
East and M and N streets in what is now " Swampoole." The 
widow Digges had log houses in Delaware avenue near by. 

John Davidson's heirs occupied his frame mansion and log 
wings (32x20) (12x12) between 12th and 13th streets west 
and K and L north ; his family graveyard was at the corner of 
K and 13th. 

Mr. Fenwick's house, 60 by 81, stood right on the space 
where Georgia Avenue intersects S. Capitol Street, at the 
water side ; the graveyard was just by. 

Messrs. Lynch and Sands lived in a " mansion house," 20 
by 17 at the corner of L North, and 6th West, near the old 
Seventh Street Market. 

The widow Young had a mansion house 86 by 23, with half 
a dozen tenements, right on the Eastern branch, between 17th 
and 18th streets East, at the burnt bridge. 

James M. Lingan's frame mansion and office attached, 66 by 
22 feet, was right in Ninteenth street, nearest N, at M and N 
North. 

Samuel Davidson's log dwelling and kitchen (original) stood 
on square 183, at 17th and M streets, four squares north of 
Lafayette Square. 

'David Burns's house and graveyard, occupied then by James 
Burns, 20 by 16— graveyard 80 by 30 — stood on H street 
North, between 9 and 10 West, identical with the subsequent 
Mausoleum. 

The residence of Notley Young was a staunch and roomy 
brick, which stood near the Potomac side, upon the bluffs near 
the Washington wharves, and was taken away within a com- 
paratively recent period, to accommodate a new street. 



VARIOUS . SITES. , 613 

Notley Young's mansion (original proprietor) was in the 
middle of South G street (between Squares 389 and 390) and 
between 9th and 10th streets West, half way between the 
steamboat landing and Long Bridge. One of his barns was at 
10th and D, and another at 7th and I. His graveyard was at 
the riverside where South II strikes the water. 

Abramam Young's mansion house (22 by 22) and grave- 
yard stood on North D, by 15th East, at the city boundary. 

Samuel Blodget's mansion, 29 by 12, stood in 16th Street 
West, between P North and Massachusetts Avenue, half way 
between the White House and the boundary. 

George Walker's mansion — 53 by 32, graveyard, and log 
tenements stood between Maryland Avenue, North E, 6th 
Street East and 7th, Square 862. on the Bladensburg route. 

Mrs. Prout's house — 53 by 24, and graveyard stood on 
Square 90, M and 8th streets. 

Mr. N. Young's dwelling, above referred to (42 by 52), stood 
in G street, between 9th and 10th, Square 389-90, and it had 
27 cabins, sheds, houses, barns, etc., attached, between 7th and 
11th, and F, Street and the river. 

At Alexandria, in 1798, 'Mr. Fairfax's house was on the op- 
posite heights of Hunting Creek, opposite " Parry Hill." Cam- 
eron's Mills were just above the neck of the creek ; Lee's 
house was on the first knoll back of the town, just opposite 
Cameron Street, if extended ; the Episcopal Church was at 
Columbus and Cameron Streets; the Quaker meeting-house at 
St. Asaphe and Wolf ; the Presbyterian and Methodist, on the 
same square, between Royal and Fairfax and Wolf and Duke. 
Catholic and Dutch Lutheran Churches were suggested at 
Church and Washington Streets. 

Widow Wheeler's log buildings, and three distinct corps of 
graves, in rows, stood three squares above the Navy Yard 
bridge, between Virginia Avenue and 14th East, and South M 
Streets and the Eastern Branch, right behind the Commission- 
ers' wharf, where also was the upper ferry. 

One of the most notable estates around Washington is that 



614 



SOCIx\L SKETCHES. 



of the Calvert family, which existed in somewhat better than 
its present condition, before the District was laid out. 

The estate of 'Mount—Airy lies one mile north of Bladens- 
burg, upon the Old Stage road to Baltimore, and the Washing- 
ton Branch Steam Railway passes through the noble level park 
where once, I have heard " Porte Crayon " say, herds of deer 
roamed at will. Lodges of plastered brick, quaint to the eye, 
flank the main gate, and as the visitor canters down the drive 
to the mansion, he sees upon a low eminence to the left, within 







MT. AIRY. 



view of both lodge and villa, the burial ground of the family. 
Two flat tombs, vault-fashion, enclose the remains of John and 
of Rosalie Eugenia Calvert, and the memorial stone of Charles B. 
Calvert is an upright piece of marble, — the three substantial 
and plain, and thus inscribed: 

In memory of Charles B. Calvert; Born August 23d, 1808, Died May 12, 
18G4. 

Blessed are the merciful ; for *they shall obtain mercy. — Matt. v. 7. 

Here lies the body of John Calvert, Esq., of Riversdaje; youngest son of 
Benedict Calvert, Esq., of Mt. Airy, Prince George County, Maryland, and 
grandson of Charles Calvert, sixth Lord. Baltimore, who died January 28, 
1838, aged 70. 

Here rests the body of Rosalie Eugenia Calvert, wife of Geo. Calvert, 
and daughter of Henry J. Strie, Esq., of Antwerp. 

May she be remembered among the children of God, and her lot be cast 
among the Saints. 



SOCIAL SUBJECTS OF INTEREST. 615" 

" We see the hand we worship and adore, 
And justify the all-disposing power." 

From this mound of sepulture a pleasant view is afforded of 
the picturesque negro cabins scattered over the estate, of the 
large barns and improvements which were in their prime about 
1830, and of the blue and gray wooded hills of Prince George's, 
which almost enclose the estate, as well as that vista of declin- 
ing terraces toward the Anacosta, at Bladensburg. The man- 
sion is built of brick and stone, rough plastered, and in color, 
bright yellow. It is flanked with offices which are connected 
• with the centre by short colonnades, and the grounds are taste- 
fully ornamented with glass houses and fountains. This 
estate has been the home of one of the natural branches of 
the Calvert family for many generations — that of Benedict 
Calvert, son of Charles, Fifth Lord Baltimore, whose 
daughter Nelly became the youthful bride of the child of Mrs. 
George Washington, and Mother of George Washington Parke 
Custis, with whose estate of Arlington in Virginia, the fine old 
aristocratic coaches of the Cal verts exchanged ceremonial visits, 
up to the periods of Jackson and Van Buren. 

Following the fashions and opportunities of their time and 
station, the Lords Baltimore strewed natural offspring, even 
from the beginning. The pious George, first of the title, left 
Philip Calvert, born out of wedlock ; Benedict Leonard, 
Fourth Baltimore, married the grandchild of a mistress of 
Charles II, and this lady bore illegitimate children whom the 
husband petitioned the House of Lords " to bastardize." 
Charles, the Fifth Baltimore, left Benjamin (called Benedict) 
Calvert, who is, in the above inscription, for some reason at- 
tributed to the Sixth Baltimore. Finally, Frederick, the last 
Baltimore, died without other issue than Henry Harford and his 
sister, both natural offspring. The family of Benedict Calvert 
of Mt. Airy, has always been honorably associated and held in 
high esteem in Maryland. 

The great families of that early day in the vicinity of Wash- 
ington were the Calverts of Mount Airy, the Curtises of Vir- 



SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

ginia and Georgetown, and the Carrolls of Duddington. Mrs. 
George Washington's son married Eleanor Calvert, and the 
eldest daughter of this marriage married Thomas Law, the 
second married Thomas Peter of Georgetown, and the son mar- 
ried Mary Lee Fitzhugh and moved to Arlington House after 
the death of his grandmother Washington. Here we have a 
family association both mutable and memorable. 

Thomas Law, brother of Lord Ellenborough, a Lord Chief- 
Justice of the King's Bench, and son of a Bishop of Carlisle, 
made a great fortune by the aid of Warren Hastings in India, 
and his brother was one of Hastings' counsel. It was thought 
better for the interests of Hastings that Law should slip off to 
America, and as at that time an immense speculation was cur- 
rent in Washington City lots, Law embarked and lost the 
greater part of his fortune in building houses around the new 
Capitol. He erected several of the fine old edifices on New 
Jersey Avenue heights, and there he dwelt in widower solitude 
after his divorce from his wife, who had taken advantage of a 
visit he made to Europe in 1804 to assume male apparel and 
consort with officers at the marine barracks. The house where 
Law dwelt after obtaining the divorce was then a boarding 
house for Congressmen kept by Mitchel, a Frenchman. It 
was Law who obtained the consent of Congress to open the 
Tiber Creek by lottery. These points are derived from C. W. 
Janson's American book, published in London, 1807. 

Miss Josephine Seaton tells us that Thomas Law was a 
younger- brother of Lord Ellenbo.o igh, L rl Chief-Justiae of 
the King's Bench and brother of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. 
He served in the civil list under Lord Cornwallis in India and 
came to America enraptured with Washington's character and 
Republican prospects. He married Anne Custis, sister of 
George Washington Parke Custis, of Arlington, and built blocks 
in the city with his India accumulations, and had a country 
house. Like Joel Barlow he was a deist. He had two sons, 
John and Edmund, and possessed considerable random genius. 
Jefferson wrote to him respectfully in 1822 from Monticello. 

Colonel John Tayloe, one of the wealthiest land-holders in 



THE FAMOUS OCTAGON. 617 

Virginia, moved to Washington and built a town house in 1798. 
He had an income of 160,000 a year, was married to the 
daughter of Governor Ogle of Maryland, and was thirty years 
of age when his house was finished. It was called the Octa- 
gon.* The following year he established the Washington race, 
course nearly on the site of the present Columbia College. 
His income in 1804 was said to ■ have been $75,000 a year, and 
he expended $33,000 annually in the purchase of land, having 
great tracts on both sides of the Potomac. He died in the 
Octagon, March 3, 1828, in the 58th year of his age ; his 
widow lived until 1 855. Tayloe was undoubtedly the wealthiest 
citizen of Washington in the first quarter of a century of its 
history. Probably no other person has had as much income 
since within the District limits, if we except Mr. Corcoran the 
banker. Tayloe was educated in England after the revolution. 
A considerable portion of his large property remains in the 
hands of his connections. 

On the Maryland side of the Potomac within a few hours' 
ride of Washington are two great old mansions called respect- 
ively Notley Hall and Marshall Hall. 

Notley Hall is referred to in the novel of Rob of the Bowl in 
these terms : 

" Think of my ride all the way to Notley Hall — and round 
about by the head of the river too — for I doubt if I have any 
chance to get a cart over the ferry to-night. The boat-keeper 
is not often sober at this hour. Would you rather ride twenty 
miles (from old St. Mary's) to Notley, or twelve toMattapany ?" 

George Notley was mentioned in the remodeled school laws 
of 1723 as one of the seven trustees of the principal and better 
sort of inhabitants of Prince's Georges county named by the 
Assembly. 

The Marshalls were a leading church of England family in 
St. George's Hundred as early as 1612. Marshall Hall is now 
(1872) a pic-nic resort owned by a Washington City inn-keeper. 
The Addison family of Oxon-Hill came to America between 
1650 and 1660. 



* Engraving of Tayloe's Octagon on page 



618 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

More than two hundred feet above the Potomac stands 
Arlington House, one of those huge adaptations of classical 
architecture to domestic uses which abounded in the Middle 
States and the South about the period of the Revolution. It 
shows to admirable advantage from Washington, with its front 
of a hundred and forty feet breadth, much of which is taken up 
with a heavy Doric^portico, designed, as old Custis, its proprie- 
tor, used to say, in his affectation of art, after the Temple of 
Paestum. Bat when the grandson of George Washington's 
wife got the great columns up, his patience, his money, or his 
art gave out, and he hastily covered the Temple of Psestum 
with a barn roof. The house is not split up into so many 
small rooms as Mount Vernon, and some of its larger apart- 
ments are cool and spacious. It used to be the depositary of 
many Washingtonian trophies and portraits, and we owe to 
Custis an account of nearly all the pictures and casts of Wash- 
ington that were taken. In the light of the late war Arling- 
ton House might have become a sort of rebel Mount Vernon 
had Lee been victorious, and its position is strikingly like that 
of Washington's homestead. It has the sam,e yellow color of 
rough casting, a lawn and natural fresh timber, and Custis 
and his wife are buried together privately upon their estate, 
like George and Martha Washington. But by the reverse of 
fortune, and by the many thousand Federal soldiers buried 
around the mansion, Arlington is the Mount Vernon of that 
collective Washington of the second Union — the volunteer 
soldier of the people. Here are fifty or sixty acres of graves, 
a white head-board to every one ; and the natural level of 
the grass rolls over all, so that the dismal coffin-like mound 
common to church yards is not manifest. The grounds are 
laid out in an unaffected way, and on the great carriage-drives 
the officers are buried. Amongst the soldiers' graves there 
are some rebels, laid away in honorable equity, but accredited 
to their cause upon their head-boards. The effect of the ceme. 
tery is to make one think of rest, neatness, and coolness. Over- 
head, the hickory, walnut, elm, oak, and chestnut trees, some 



TH3 ARLINGTON ESTATE. 619 

of them a century old, make shadow without mourning. There 
are no funereal willows or cypresses. 

The graves project their files of head-boards to the limit of 
the timber, and they ramble into the realm of sunshine, mak- 
ing the semblance of a silent encampment of tents in min- 
iature. The disconnected remains of two thousand soldiers 
of Bull Run are laid away together under a single granite 
scroll, which bears a dignified descriptive title. The cemetery 
proper does not occupy more than a third of Arlington wood 
and park, which is probably composed of 200 acres, and is a 
fine instance of Virginia landscape, covered with great trees, 
containing springs and rills, and from many parts of it the 
city of Washington and the suburb of Georgetown are seen 
directly below, in all the clear chiseling of a Potomac atmos- 
phere. The mansion of Arlington is merely an office for the 
Warden of the cemetery now. The old estate, of which it was 
the homestead, embraced eleven hundred acres, and was the 
property of Daniel Parke Custis, the first husband of Mrs. 
George Washington, and one of the richest men in the colo- 
nies. Washington left it to his wife's grandson and his own 
adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, who died in 
1857, leaving this estate to his daughter, Mrs. Colonel Robert 
E. Lee, during her life, and then to Custis and Fitzhugh Lee, 
his grandsons. Arlington could not be confiscated, therefore, 
as it was not the property of the traitor Lee, but by the accu- 
mulation of taxes upon it, the State of Virginia ordered it to 
be sold. > Edwin M. Stanton, to whom we owe the purchase 
and preservation of a good many relics, such as Ford's theatre, 
resolved ,at any price to buy Arlington. He bid it in without 
opposition for twenty-six thousand dollars. Previous to this 
time all the Washington relics that had not been carried off 
by Mrs. Lee, were taken to the Patent-Office, that temple of 
sewing machines and martyrs' relics. The old house is naked 
of everything but flower-pots now. 



620 



SOCIAL SKETCHES. 




" BRENTWOOD. 



" Brentwood," the estate 
(1873) of Captain Carlisle 
Patterson, U. S. N., stands 
in the hilly woods north of 
the Capital. It was the farm 
of Robert Brent, Esq., a Mary- 
land farmer, whose daughter 
married Joseph Pearson, Con- 
gressman from North Caroli- 
na. Soon after the Capital 
was pitched in the neighborhood. 

The house was built in 1816 from designs by Latrobe, who 
threw his habitual dome over it, but devised a really elegant 
residence. The main building is three rooms broad, including 
a very elegant crosswise hall and the dome behind it as rooms, 
which they are, and of exquisite proportions at that. The 
wings are five rooms deep. 

The Pearson Mill stood until the Civil War, on the Tiber near 
.Boundary street, when it was pulled down, but not until a 
painting of it had been made by Mr. Cranch, the artist. Many 
years before the water had been diverted, to supply the Cap- 
ital and its fountains. 

Mr. Pierson was thrice married, and to Miss Worthington of 
Georgetown at last. One of the daughters of this marriage was 
wedded to Augustus Jay, grandson of Chief-Justice John Jay. 
There remained of this estate in 1873 about 150 acres ; nine- 
ty-six acres had been detached and turned into the Kendall 
Green, and Columbian Institute properties. The present owner, 
Captain Patterson, is the brother-in-law of Admiral David 
Porter. 

Daniel Carroll, the first Commissioner of Washington, was 
born at Upper Marlbro, — an old Maryland court-house town, 
recently opened to the outer world by railway, — and he was 
sixty years of age when he became a Commissioner to locate 
the Capital City upon a part of his estate. He was a Catholic, 
and therefore for a small part of his life not eligible to political 



TUDOR PLACE. 



621 



promotion. But his wealth, prudence, and patriotism, and the 
leading position of his brother, Bishop Carroll, and of the 
Carroll family at large, made him, to the end of his days, a 
prominent man in public counsels. He had been a member of 
Congress, # and a member of the Constitutional Convention, and 
was near the close of his days when he became the Federal 
Commissioner. Reduced by infirmities he was unable to work 
with much energy upon the Capital site and he resigned his 
office in three or four years, and died May, 1796. 

The Carrolls of the western shore of Maryland were a very 
numerous family, and much confusion has grown out of the 
similarity of their names. At Bishop Carroll's chapel, eight 
miles north of Washington, are tombs of Eleanor Carroll, relict 
of Daniel Carroll, Esq., who died in 1796 at the remarkable 
age of 92, so that she must have been born in 1704. What a 
remarkable old lady this would be to tell us about pre-Wash- 
ingtonian incidents ! In the same grave-yard lies Ann Brent, 
daughter of Daniel Carroll, and widow of Robert Brent, who < 
was born in 1733, and died in 1804. In the same grave-yard 7 
lie the Digges, a notable family in their day. and patrons o$/ 
Major L' Enfant. 

At Georgetown College Cemetery, a cross of marble stands 
at the head of a slab which is said to cover the general remains 
of those elder Car- _ _^=^=,^ .__ _===^=^^====^^ „ ;S~ssv~_ 
rolls who were re- 
moved from Dud- 
dington at a com- 
paratively recent 
period. ' " At the 
base of the cross 
is the inscription, 
set up over the 
son of the Simon 
Carroll : • 

" Daniel Carroll, of Duddington, Obt. May 9, 1849, aged 84." 

Tudor Place, of which we give an engraving, is the finest 
villa in Georgetown, and was built by Thomas Peter. Here 
Robert-. E. Lee paid his last visit to the District of Columbia, 




TUDOR PLACK. 



622 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

about 1869. It is now occupied by Thos. Beverley Kennon, 
of the Peter family. 

Threekali's addition to Georgetown celebrates the name of a 
notable family, whose estate was near the convent, and is now 
destroyed. 

" Kalorama," used to be a celebrated "Washington villa, the 
seat of Joel Barlow, Esq., poet, diplomatist, soldier, and suc- 
cessful speculator. 

Colonel William Washington lived at Kalorama prior to 
Barlow. 

Another notable place in Georgetown is the Linthicum 
house, built by Colonel Dorsey, next owned by Robert Bever- 
ley and occupied for many years by John C. Calhoun, while in 
the height of his national reputation. 

Thomas Lin Lee, who was at the time fifty years old, was 
addressed by Washington, in July, 1794, and asked to serve 
with Richard Potts, as Commissioner, in place of Governor 
Johnson and Dr. Stewart. " The year 1800," said the Presi- 
dent, "is approaching with rapid strides, equally so ought the 
public buildings to advance. The prospect is 1 nattering ; . . 
the crisis is, nevertheless, delicate." Washington then inti- 
mated that he wished to avoid past negligence by naming Com- 
missioners who would reside on the Federal site and consider 
their salaries as paid to them with that understanding to 
defray their expenses. 

Mr. Lee had been Governor of Maryland between 1779 and 
1783, and an efficient co-operator with General Washington in 
supporting the armies of the country. He was a delegate both 
to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 
and had just retired from the Governorship of the State when 
he received the nomination of Federal Commissioner. He died 
in 1810. 

Richard Potts, another Commissioner, lived at Frederick- 
town, - and had been a patriot and Governor of Maryland 
between the early terms of Governor Lee, and was a United 
States Senator. He was an educated gentleman. 



SOCIAL SKETCHES. 623 

Frederick, in Maryland, was a flourishing place, with . an 
arsenal, five churches, and about seven hundred houses, in the 
last year of Washington's administration. Travelers in those 
days describe the portion of Maryland intermediate between 
Frederick and Washington, as nearly reduced to the condition 
in which it remains, to a great degree. Yellow clay and 
gravel, tilled with the hoe instead of the plough, worn out with 
tpbacco culture, and often lying in naked prospects, with 
scarcely an herb to cover it. The people, however, were pry- 
ing and inquisitive, compared to that phlegmatic German popu- 
lation on the Monocacy, whose fields were thrifty and green 
with wheat. An English traveler, who visited the Great -Falls 
as early as 1796, turned off at Montgomery Court-house, and 
crossed about three miles above them, by a ferry, one mile and 
a quarter wide, to the Virginia shore. 

Thomas Johnson, another Commissioner, had been a dele- 
gate from Maryland to the Constitutional Congress, and Gover- 
nor during the early part of the Revolution. Between 1791 
and 1793 he was Judge of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. He died at the age of eighty-seven, in 1819. 

Alexander White, Commissioner as above, had been a dele- 
gate from North Carolina to the Continental Congress, and 
a representative up to 1793 ; he is said to have been an 
ardent and eloquent man, and he died at Woodville, Virginia, 
1801. 

Mr. Commissioner Scott died in the year 1800, and his place 
was filled by W. Church. 

Analostan island, in the Potomac, opposite Georgetown, con- 
taining 70 acres, was the celebrated residence of General John 
Mason, where was entertained Louis Philippe, by the descend- 
ant of George Mason, of Gunston Hall. The house was burned 
down during the civil war, and the island is now a pleasure 
resort. Jas. M. Mason, rebel Commissioner to Europe, pas- 
sed his childhood here. Government built a causeway, 
connecting this island with the Virginia shore. The novel- 



624 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

ist and poet Paulding wrote as follows, in 1825, on " Ana- 
dostan :" 

" On either side, and all around, ,. 
The weltering wave is seen to flow, 
Noiseless, or, ii you hear a sound, 
"lis but a murmur, soft and low. 

The great trees, nodding to and fro 

In stately conclaves not a few, 
"Whisper as secretly and slow 
« As bashful lovers ever do. 

The tinkling bell, the plashing oar, 

The buzzing of the insect throng, 
The laugh that echoes from the shore, 

The unseen thrush's vesper song — 

And when I count the earthly hours 

That I shall cherish most of all, 
That walk in Anadostan's bowers 

Will be the first that I recall." 

A few sketches of tlie early Commissioners of the city are 
appended^-""' 

In Georgetown College Cemetery is this tombstone bearing 
reference to the family which owned a part of the river front 
where the city was pitched. 

" To the memory of the Rev. Notley Young, who departed 
this life August 1st, 1820, aged 54 years." 

Opposite Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown is what is called 
the Colonel Carter place, on which the houses burned down 
about the close of the war. Here lived the French minister 
Sartiges and M. Mercier, with whom Prince Napoleon stopped 
on his visit to this country. Governor Henry D. Cooke bought 
the grounds and ruin for $50,000 and laid the foundations of- 
a large mansion on whiuh work has been suspended for several 
years. 



AMOS KENDALL — HIS HONESTY. 



625 



» 



The following inscriptions are in Glen- 
wood Cemetery. 

Our father John Lessford, 

The Chronicler of Washington, 

Died Feb. 23d, 1862. 

Aged 36. 

Amos Kendall. 

Born August 16th, 1789. 

Died Nov. 12th, 1869. 

Jane Kyle, 

■wife of Amos Kendall, 

Born October 12 th, 1807. 

Died June 25th, 1864. 

On Postmaster General Kendall's tomb 
are these mottoes : 

" Charity is love in action." 
" Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." 
" The path of the just is as the shining light." 

TOMB OF AMOS KENDALL. 

As a public official, Mr. Kendall was one of the best in our 
service, and he may truthfully be called the great Postmaster 
General. He went into his office poor and left it very poor. 
Every cent that he has made was acquired subsequent to his 
resignation, and it was gained almost entirely by his business 
association with Mr. Morse, the inventor. When Kendall took 
the Post-Office in charge he turned qut every clerk, and for a 
week had the books of the department overhauled. Those 
clerks whose accounts were straight were re-appointed, and the 
derelict dismissed. He was so poor that a tempter appeared to 
him in the person of a subordinate and clerk, who pertly said: 

" Mr. Kendall, I am aware that you have no money. I have 
an account in the bank, and will lend you some when you are 
in need of it;" 

" Thank you," said Kendall coldly, " I don't know that I 
40 




626 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

have need to borrow any money, but when I have, I cer- 
tainly shall not borrow it from a subordinate." 

This clerk wanted some favors in the way of pickings. Next 
morning he was turned out of the Post-Office. 

Morse, the inventor, lacking business qualifications entirely, 
had made up his .mind to secure Amos Kendall to popularize 
his telegraph apparatus. Kendall set to work with rigid method, 
and, proceeding to organize companies, arranged that Morse 
should have so much stock in each company, according to its 
capital, and that he (Kendall) should have a certain portion of 
Morse's revenue. In this way both of them grew speedily to 
riches, but Kendall had business thrift and vigilance, and at 
this time he is probably richer than Morse — unless he be dead. 
Kendall has been in two things consistent all his latter days — 
he has been a Jacksonian Democrat, and a rigid member of the 
Baptist Church. 

I met him at the close of the Impeachment trial, and inter- 
rogated him as to Johnson's- criminality. 

" I take little sympathy in politics these days," he said ; 
" neither with Mr. Johnson nor his opponents. I never admired 
him." 

Last New Year's day the old man stood among his married 
daughters, receiving visitors, the handsomest septuagenarian in 
Washington. His residence, until of late, has been in a grove, 
called Kendall Green, on the borders of the city, and he is 
rich in real estate all round about here. The Baptist Church, 
with the high iron spire, at the corner of Eighth and H streets. 
has cost him probably $150,000. Kendall was a Northern man 
who began life a school teacher in Kentucky, and he never lost 
sight of the New England economical virtues, while he was 
conservative in politics. I asked him last New Year's day 
'what he. thought, after this long interval, of the charactei of 
Andrew. Johnson. 

" He grows larger as he recedes," said Kendall ; " he was 
the greatest American I ever looked upon, and second to only 
him to whom all greatness is subordinate, the first President." 



THE HOME OP JEFFERSON. 



627 



The later life of Mr. Kendall has been troubled by but one 
considerable loss, that of his son, who was shot dead in a street 
collision with the son-in-law of his old friend, John C. Rives. 
He made no upbraidal nor mutiny, but laid away vindictive- 
ness with the bones of the lad, who was at fault. 

Kendall was not a man that the nation will weep over. He 
was too strict, too well-balanced, too much guided by pure, cold 
human judgment to wring from men affectionate regrets that 
he never desired. Sufficient unto himself, within his own 
resources, architect of the wealth he evolved, his life has been 
, so complete and fortunate that there is no urn upon his tomb 
for tears. Heaven makes some men exceptionally perfect in 
life, that, dying, it may show how poor they were, lacking 
weaknesses. 

A few hours ride by rail from Washington will take the vis- 
itor to Charlottesville, the home of Jefferson of which I shall 
give a short description. 




Jefferson's university and home. 

Leaving Washington at 7 o'clock A. M., I breakfasted at 
Alexandria, and crossed Bull Run before 9. There are two 
Northern settlements on the weird old stream, — its deep pools 
and frequent eddies lying gloomily among the rocks— one set- 



628 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

tlement completely new, and hewn out of the timber and un- 
derbrush lying beside the railroad, and its neat frame cottages 
and warehouses standing upon smart boulevard streets, with per- 
spectives of bold hills in the street vistas ; the other village is 
at Manassas Junction, amongst Beauregard's old forts, and it 
contains five hundred traders, tavern-keepers, and mechanics. 

The view at Manassas is the first of the great series of Blue 
Ridge landscapes, which make what is called the Piedmont 
terrace of Virginia so entrancing. Manassas is a bold, open 
plateau, bounded by .blue mountains, which make the land- 
scapes look wide and stately. Bull Run is the gulf to the 
northward where the plateau drops away. Nothing now 
remains of the battle fought here but certain redoubts, 
breastworks, and forts, overgrown with sedge or dribbling off 
to weed. . The Rappahannock and its outlying stations — every 
one the site of a battle — soon passed by. I saw the pretty 
soldiers' cemetery at Culpepper, and then Cedar Mountain arose, 
where I had wandered bareheaded on the night of the fierce 
battle there, feeling the first paralysis of the fear of death. 
All the crops of oats, wheat, potatoes, and corn were thriving, 
and the wheat harvest was nearly over. I dined at Gordons- 
ville, a town of railway junction, which the rebels held during 
nearly the whole of the war — a pretty, struggling, whitewashed 
town at the foot of 4iills ;• and here leaving the Richmond road 
to the left, I passed through the Southwest Mountains, under 
the base of Monticello, and crossing the Red Ravenna River, 
was at Charlottesville. 

Being here to attend commencement, I took advantage of 
the proximity of Monticello to ride there. It is only three miles 
from the town, and on the side opposite to the site of the ■ 
University. It is a doomed mansion, standing on the crest of 
a conical mountain, the promontory of a ridge of such, and 
the Ravenna River washes the base of the hill. 

Hiring a horse for one dollar and a half, or at the rate of half 
a dollar an hour, I rode briskly out the south road, forded 
Moore's Creek, and turned up the base of Sneed's Mountain. 



JEFFERSON'S HOME. 629 

Fine forest trees shaded the way j the fields were tinted blue, 
with the stalks of weeds ; the wheat, all cut and shocked, stood 
on the shoulders of the hills, and' slipped into the dips and 
curls of rich valleys ; the streams were heard saying liquid 
things to the dry air, and rabbits, tame as the mice that play 
round a baby's crib, cocked up their plump bodies in the road 
and looked sideways archly and squintingly. All the streams 
caught a reddish -tinge from the oxides of iron in the clay, and 
yet they reflected the sky and their banks like crystal ; locust 
trees grew amongst the stone walls that enclosed the fields ; 
some large oaks stood in the barest vistas, and the loose horses 
rested beneath them from the sun ; I heard few birds or grass- 
hoppers singing, and my whole attention and ecstacy felt the 
impression of the expanding sceneries, which widened as I 
mounted, showing the humped backs of blue mountains, and 
loftier ranges further off, which were swung across the sky like 
a scarf of gauze. The forms of these nearer mountains were 
like the postures of Micnel Angelo's marbles, unique, sinewy, 
.startling, elbowed, and hipped, and bending and yawning, and 
their strong outlines were filled in with the bluest, grayest, 
sweetest mists and herbages, while between the isolated cones 
and spines the valleys rolled like the Illinois prairies, and, 
wherever there was a depression, you could guess a stream. 
Rising higher and higher, the narrow roadway became a terrace 
on the brink of a ravine, and at times there were deep creases 
and rocky shelves . over which the way had to be carefully 
picked, but the higher I climbed the purer and rarer grew the 
air, the nobler the stature of the oaks and ash trees, and the 
deeper the sense of majesty in nature round about. I pictured 
the tall, strong, buoyant man who had ridden over this road so 
often, looking away at the plains and eminences, and feeling in 
his* spirited nature the inspiration of their rolling freedom. 
Like the backs of bisons thundering along in herd and suddenly 
arrested by some alarm, they stood silent, picturesque, and 
gigantic along the plain. Glimpses of other mountains were 
seen through the foliage, as I rose into the purer air, and at 



630 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

last, gaining the crest of the ridge, I turned along the moun- 
tain spine and began to climb Monticello. No fence nor wall 
lined the road, which wound round and round through the 
timber, till, suddenly, in the wildest part of the wood, I came 
to a tall, brick enclosure, partly broken down and pierced in 
the middle to make place for a panel of iron rods, through 
which I saw a rough granite obelisk and some granite slabs. 
This I knew to be the family cemetery of Jefferson. 

It was a part of the natural woods, and tall locusts, linden, 
and hickory trees grew amongst the graves, while an abundance 
of small herbage, bushes, weeds, and climbing vines grew upon 
the walls and amongst the slabs and vaults. The enclosure 
was about one hundred feet square, the wall was ten or twelve 
feet high, and within it were, perhaps, thirty vaults and tombs. 
No words can convey to you an idea of the desolation of the 
scene as associated with such a man. The first glimpse through 
the bars filled me with a sense of pity and indignation. The 
bars contained no wicket, and a bafred gate on another side 
was fastened with a large padlock, so I climbed over the grille 
and the tottering wall, and let myself down amongst the graves. 
A thunder storm which had been gradually moving and mut- 
tering overhead now began to bellow, and some lightning 
attended it, but not a drop of rain fell. 

' Jefferson's tomb is made of granite, and is about eight feet 
high ; almost every letter is gone from it, chiseled and chip- 
ped off by vandal students, and it looks battered and nonde- 
script, like a Druid stone. Under the monument is a plain 
slab, more perfect, covering the remains of his favorite daugh- 
ter, Martha, and this, like almost every other stone in the grave- 
yard, contains a religious or poetic inscription. One or two of 
the slabs have fallen off the brick vaults, and some are cracked 
or overgrown with moss. The grave-yard seems to have no 
keeper, and to be falling to decay unregretted ; weeds grow 
under the trees ; the road to the gate is blocked with bushes ; 
the great President's tomb itself is simply frightful. He has 
many living descendants, but, as the livery stable man said 
to me : 



jeffekson's home. 631 

" You know how it is down yur, now. It's every man for 
himself, and ' Ole Tom' being dead, has no.friends." 

Mounting my horse anew, I passed through the remainder 
of the wood of Monticello, entered a cornfield, and finally drew 
near a garden fence and some vineyard poles ; before me 
stretched a straight and narrow orchard lane, with some out- 
buildings at the further end ; to my left, on the crest of the 
mountain arose the dome of Monticello. You must understand 
that Jefferson's house is set upon a lawn, made by shaving- 
down the cap of the mountain, and that it stands probably 
five hundred feet above the little town of Charlottesville and 
the Eavenna River. This house was not finished when the 
Revolutionary War began, but Jefferson inhabited it while he 
was Governor, the Legislature at that time meeting at Char- 
lottesville, and here were entertained nearly all the officers 
captured with Burgoyne at Saratoga, as well as Lafayette, and 
all the great leaders of troops and opinions for fifty years. 

Monticello, like almost every celebrated Virginia mansion of 
the old planter time, wears a look of dilapidation, and, as you 
draw near it, you feel a sense of shiftlessness, of old black 
imported bricks, of gates unhinged and hats stuffed in windows, 
of threadbare stateliness and imposing imposition, bankruptcy, 
reduction, failure, woe, these are the impressions. 

The style of the house is that of a Corinthian villa, with a 
dome over the middle, and with two irregular wings, one portico 
opening into a green lawn, littered over with carts, harness, 
rotten benches, and beautiful shade trees, — of the latter, par- 
ticularly lindens, poplars, and locusts. The portico on the 
reverse side of the house looks out upon a sort of parterre, 
which is enclosed on three sides by the state stables and by a 
continuous underground passage which, after an old notion, ' 
had connected the whole series of stables, dry wells, and so 
forth, with the mansion. The stable wings are concluded at 
the two ends by two-story pavillions, one of which was Jeffer- 
son's library in the Summer time, and the other was his office 
in the Winter. The house is large, roomy, and manorial, but 



632 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

it is in a sad state of dilapidation. The shingles on the roof 
are so rotten that the rain drives in at every frequent shower, 
and all the wood work of the place is decayed ; the paint of a 
former time has left no vestiges ; therefore all the woodwork 
has a whitish dun-color, but the well- blackened English bricks 
are said to be as durable and as good as ever. 

A shambling boy, who had lost one arm ■ at the battle of Lit- 
tle Rock, fighting with Sterling Price, told me to tie. up my 
horse, and he charged me fifty cents to enter the old mansion. 
Over the door, under the portico, was a great clock, balanced 
with cannon balls, which had not been going for forty years. 
The great hall of the house is partly surrounded above by a gal- 
lery or balcony, where it is the tradition that the President 
used to show himself to crowds of students and admiring visi- 
tors. 

From this room I passed into the dining-room, w T ith deep 
butteries, pantries, and so forth, where there was no particle of 
furniture and a bad smell of funky wood. On the other hand, 
I walked into a great, naked drawing-room, where there were 
two large mirrors, made of different pieces of glass set in . the 
wall, and as my face skimmed over them, I had a melancholy 
presentiment of the many historic visitors whose countenances 
had also rested there, and — perished. The room under the 
dome was an octagonal ball-room, with a place at one side 
where the ladies could descend into the pediment of one of the 
porticoes, and use it for a dressing-room. 

I said to my guide at this spot : " I believe Jefferson never 
danced ?" 

" Oh, I expect that he did," said the guide, " for he was a 
rale infidel, fotched up by old Yoltaw." 

The indescribably humorous pronunciation of " Voltaw" com- 
pelled me to laugh. 

Said I : " Was Jefferson really brought up by 'Voltaire ?" 

" Oh, yes, he raised him." 

Now, this sort of anecdote is just as true as the mass of 
things related of Jefferson by orthodox people. 



Jefferson's home. 633 

Voltaire died in 1778, while Jefferson did not visit France 
until 1784 ; so that he never saw Voltaire at all. But Frank- 
lin was a friend of Voltaire, and Jefferson succeeded Franklin 
as Minister to France, and he probably had a higher admira- 
tion for Franklin than for any man of his time. 

I observed, all through the low, uncomfortable bed-rooms of 
Monticello, that Franklin stoves were ubiquitous, — real, genuine, 
original Franklins, — and the, guide said that these same stoves 
could be found in broken pieces all over the farm. 

There-was never a bedstead in all Monticello, alcoves having 
been substituted in the walls, and slats were fixed to staples in 
these alcoves. On one of these uncomfortable beds Jefferson's 
wife died, and they were obliged to lower her body out of one 
of the semi-circular windows which abounded there, because 
there was no stairway commodious enough to permit them to 
take out the coffin. 

I wandered through these old bed-rooms, walking out upon 
the dangerous roof, haunted the rotten old stables, peeped 
through the dry walls and the covered walks ; saw the front 
of the house, all chopped and chiseled over with names of 
boys and boors. In some of the rooms the farmer's wife was 
drying apples and making raspberry jam ; in others farm-gear, 
harness, and old barrels were strewn about. In one room a 
dog had littered ; the man of the house had the rheumatism ; 
not far off they pointed out the house of Mr. Randolph-, Jef- 
ferson's chief grandson, and looking southward, we could see 
Willis' Mountain, said to be ICO miles away. I think in all 
America there is no such landscape for size and beauty equal 
to this from Monticello. It far surpasses the view from the 
terrace of St. Germain. At one time Jefferson owned nearly 
the whole country round about, but toward the end of his life 
he became in debt, and sold parcel after parcel, until now the 
estate is reduced to about 250 acres, which rents for $250 a 
year. A field hand is capable of possessing the home of the 
richest President. 

Monticello belonged to Captain Levey, a Hebrew, and a 



634 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

Commander in th'e United States Navy, who was a rich man, 
and who had a romantic attachment to the great leader ; for 
he not only took Jefferson's house and dwelt in it, but he had a 
statue of that chieftain made and presented to the United 
States, and it now stands in front of the "White House. Levey, 
I am told, married his own niece, which was contrary to the 
laws of Virginia, and he left the State before the war, where- 
upon the rebel Commonwealth confiscated his property. It 
is now in litigation. Levey is said to have expressed in his will 
the desire that it should be repaired, and made an institute for 
the children of United States Navy officers.' The neighbors 
consider the estate valued at about twelve thousand dollars. 
It is now occupied by a farmer named Wheeler. Jefferson's 
nail factories, grist-mills, and various other expensive enter- 
prises, are now extinct or' in ruins. The neighbors say that 
Monticello will make the finest vineyard hill in America, but at 
present tumbles more and more to ruin every year, and 
seems to possess neither master nor patron. 

As a change from old times to new, I would relate a passage 
of a ride recently taken to the Great Falls of the Potomac, 
passing on the way the celebrated Cabin John bridge. 

The name of Jefferson Davis has been obliterated from this 
bridge, as from almost every piece of architecture and engin- 
eering in the country. 

The hollow ruin of a hotel at the Great Falls is kept by one 
Jackson, the brother of that inn-keeper who, at Alexandria, shot 
Colonel Ellsworth dead ; and the survivor is a good specimen of 
a tavern-keeper in an old settled, pro-slavery region ; a slouchy, 
•shiftless, greasy-haired man, whose humor is chiefly an appal- 
ling exhibit of his manifold offences, seasoned up with a. wild 
amiability and familiarity. His black hair falls in snaky long 
locks, behind his 'ears, and his gray eye has the light of des- 
peration in it. Behind his bar stand a pair of double-barreled 
rifles and game-bags, and one of the guns he shows as the 
identical weapon which slew Ellsworth. Jackson says that 
the gun was not the property of his brother, but borrowed. I 



BLOCKADE-RUNNING ON THE POTOMAC. 635 

took up the rifle, giving it the benefit of the doubt, and found it 
to have been purchased in the year 1836, at a hardware store in 
Alexandria, and used for many years as a favorite par- 
tridge-piece. 

It was on deposit at the time ac the Marshall House, and 
had been loaded with slugs by its fraternal borrower, with the 
intent of killing two men with it — a man with each barrel. 
The first barrel was aimed fairly at the heart of Ellsworth, and 
in an instant the second would have slain Brownell, but the 
Zouave threw up his musket, so that Jackson's shot passed 
over his head, and at the same time the desperate assassin was 
both shot and bayoneted. 

" Where i« your brother buried ? " I asked of the inn-keeper 
at Great Falls. 

" In the family burying-ground, sir, over in Fairfax County, 
Virginia. The widow lives on a nice little property she owns 
at Fairfax Court House." 

" I believe there was afterward a military company formed 
called the " Jackson Avengers ?' " 

" Yes, sir. And they had it reported that I was sworn to 
kill Brownell. That ain't so, sir. I left him to a just 
Gord. I never bore him no hate. He was afterwards 
in Washington City, and at last he was killed at the 
second Bull Run. I had one other brother in the rebel 
army, but 1 kept out to make money. Ha ! ha ! ha ! 
There is a picture of the shooting of Ellsworth ; somebody 
came along and gave it to me, and I stuck it up behind the 
bar. Some people says it will make people dislike me, but I 
'think not. Everybody knows I'm his brother, and it's a sort 
of eppropriarte." 

The Aqueduct authorities ordered Jackson away in 1872. 

The Loudon Valley, above Great Falls, which runs parallel 
with the Shenandoah, was the haunt of Moseby's men, and 
the great conduit of treasonable information and contraband 
goods, from Washington and Baltimore to Lynchburg and 
Richmond. Leesburg was the nearest den of runners to the 



636 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

Capital of the country — thirty-four miles — and it was, per- 
haps, the most lawless village in Virginia. The rebels several 
times passed to and fro between Virginia and Maryland this 
way, as they had no railway lines to advance upon, while we 
generally moved by the lines of rail, and paid little attention 
to the ferry passengers, between Point of Rocks and Chain 
Bridge, except to patrol and picket them. Leesburg was 
illuminated the night of the defeat of Ball's Bluff, and it was- 
the scene of many of the debauches of Moseby's men. The 
wild torrent region between the mouth of Goose Creek and 
Great Falls was signally adapted to blockade running, and the 
dangers of fording and navigating in the roaring river of dark 
nights, lent a terrible interest to the enterprise of the smug- 
glers and spies. These crossed most generally in small, flat- 
bottomed scows, hastily nailed together during the day, to 
evade the order forfeiting every private boat on the Upper Po- 
tomac, and the cargo was generally whisky and drugs. 

Jackson told me that he had been fifteen times confined in 
the Old Capitol Prison for running the blockade, and, on one 
occasion, he walked straight from the jail to the hand- ferry, 
below the Great Falls, and paddled across with five barrels of 
whisky. He had been threatened with execution, if he were 
caught again, b.ut he sent a boy half a mile down stream to 
fire off pistols, and, being himself shot at several times, finally 
re-crossed the river with his cargo twice before' he could man- 
age to run it into Leesburg. There it was sold to officers and 
guerrillas for 81, in gold, a gill. 

Such opposite social passages as have been given, bring to 
view the changes wrought amongst the old Potomac people by 
pitching the national Capitol amongst them. There is a cem- 
etery in Georgetown — the most beautiful suburb of Washing- 
ton — which is worthy of a visit from anybody. It stands on 
the green heights, where they decline in -steep terraces to Rock 
Creek, and ravines making up from the base, describe inex- 
pressibly cool amphitheatres, on whose successive shelves the 
obelisks of the dead stand motionless and white anions: the 



THE CAPITAL CITY AS APPROACHED. , 637 

foliages. Here are buried old citizens, whose village existence 
the nation invaded, and planted the Capital City upon their 
fields, so that they grew often rich and married their daughters 
to shrewd Congressmen, whose intelligence made the best of 
every foot of ground. 

Marriage is the destiny of an accident. Shipwrecked so- 
cially upon this marshy island, many a politician made the 
best of the site and married ' Sukey Brown or Betsy Wilson, 
who became the mother of Indian contractors and foreign min- 
isters, instead of bearing a herd of young sovereigns who could 
.fight a game chicken, burn an abolitionist, or wallop a nigger, 
without the aid of the art of reading, or the distress of knowing 
how to write. 

It has occurred to me that. in all £his running narrative I 
have not given the distant reader a description of the Capital 
town, as you might have approached it, any time within the 
past fifteen years. ■ 

Here is the city, as you come to it by the oldest railway from 
the North. First, a series of grassy hills, with sandy .creeks 
at their passes ; then Biadensburg, an angular stretch of old, 
gable-chimneyed, hent-roofed houses half a mile from the rail ; 
then a line of red clay breastworks, worming up to the hill tops, 
where stand dismantled forts ; then an octagonal building with 
a cupola on it ; standing out in the country next to a farm- 
house and beside a great green imitation bronze horse on a 
pedestal in the lawn ; the home and foundry of Clark Mills, 
sculptor ; then the uneasy outlying landscapes of a city, cul- 
verts planted nowhere, streets graded to no place, brick-kilns 
and pits, a cemetery, frame shanties on goose pastures disputed 
by cows made sullen by overmilking ; boys, babies, friendless 
dogs, and negro women" toting" great bundles on their heads, 
no more fence, the smell of apparent garbage and ash heaps, 
signs of ground-rents and dirt throwing invitations ; and all 
this time you are descending into basin land and down the val- 
ley of a bare creek ; at last a dome, such majesty and whiteness 
as you never saw elsewhere, appears sailing past the clouds : 
the Capitol ! 



638 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

Out of the long, cramped, green-painted saloon-cars you de- 
scend, into a depot that is first a shed, then a dark, dull, dirty 
vestibule ; for the republican government is npt yet independ- 
ent enough to make corporations, erect buildings here worthy 
of the Capital City. The exterior of this depot is also mean 
and squatty. Backed up against the depot are omnibusses and 
cabs, whose drivers, white and negro, bully you with whip-han- 
dles. Over this pirate body you see close by like a marble 
majesty, the Capitol, dome and wing, stand silent, sentient, 
scintillant, regardless of the bare lots, shanties, barracks, ma- 
chineries, marble slabs, and unfinished dirt terraces that cur- 
round it. 

To comprehend this city further, climb to the dome of the 
Capitol. It is envelopes by a range of fort-capped hills, half 
in Maryland, half in Virginia. Through these hills the Poto- 
mac makes two broad clefts, coming down from the West and 
departing to the South. Down where it departs, a point stands 
out in the water, the City of Alexandria, Virginia, near where 
it comes in, on a hill-top, connecting with Washington, is 
Georgetown, Maryland. Between Alexandria and Washington, 
a river makes up acutely from the Potomac, the East Branch, 
whose real name — the Anacostia — is now nearly obsolete. In the 
angle between the Potomac and the Anacostia lies the Capital 
City, about fifteen miles from the tomb of the patriarch who 
selected the site and gave it the name. The dome where you 
stand is nearly in the geographical centre of the city, yet by 
the force of circumstances, the actual, settled city lies away 
from the junction of the two rivers, between the Capitol and 
Georgetown, and in a lower, baser site. Out on the extreme 
cape, between the rivers, lies the Arsenal, connected with the 
city by a straggling line of houses ; it was the place of the trial 
antl execution of the assassins of President Lincoln. Further 
up the East Branch, where the only bridge crosses it, lies the 
Navy Yard, a walled in and busy area of twenty -eight acres ; 
over this bridge Booth and Harrold escaped to Surrats- 
ville and lower Maryland ; still further up tjie East Branch 



m 

Spill «ii i ' '■ --mmBKm 

■"■pBjg, ^J||§j§ 

lEfe - " 1BL 



VIEW OF THE CITY. 639 

lies the Congressional Burying Ground, and to both tine 
Navy Yard and the cemetery, lines of disconnected 

houses radiate from the Cap- ^ __ es®--^ 

itol. Around the Navy Yard j&tfjSjiL M Wk ^^^ 

there is a large and elderly / ^^^A^ ! jaM5 ^illk 
settlement, to which a street lik - Sm^W®" 

railway runs, and amidst it 1 

the town tower of the oldest [ flS^S^^S 

church in Washington, where 
worshiped Jefferson and Mad- 
ison. The front of the Cap- 
itol inclines this way, and 
over the high, thickly settled 
plateau looks out the Statue m 
of Liberty over your head, congressional burying ground. 

Its back is toward the real city ; behind it eighty-nine thou- 
sand people live ; .in front of it not more than fifteen thousand. 

Now turn yourself around, with your back against the back 
of the statue, and look away from the Navy Yard : 

Beneath you are the terraces of the Capitol and the lawn. 
From the bottom of the lawn great avenues radiate ; that to 
the left leads to the Long Bridge and indices Arlington Man- 
sion, far'up the Virginia Hills, a steam railroad passes along 
it and crosses the bridge to Alexandria. The second avenue 
is a canal, straight as a sunbeam, and it points to the white, 
chalky stump of the abandoned Washington Monument. The 
third is the famed Pennsylvania Avenue, dense with the costly 
shops and hotels, revealing at the bottom the granite Treasury 
building ; the fourth to the right is a short avenue, and it leads 
to the City Hall, the seat of municipal government. Half lost 
in houses beyond this are the great marble piles of the Post- 
Office and Treasury, which lie in the densest centre of the city. 
Other avenues to the right go out to the open Northern country 
and the far forts which Early invested in 1864. Away off, on 
the crest of one of these hills, you see dimly the white tower 
of the Soldiers' Home, Mr. Lincoln's summer residence. 



610 SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

Objects between this latter and your eye are the brick block 
where General Grant resided, the dingy brick factory of Gov- 
ernment Printing, and the Church of St. Aloythus, with the 
highest tower and the merriest bells of Washington. 

Now, return your eye to the Patent-Office, which stands on 
its own separate though inferior hill. A great market-house 
lies on each side of it, nearly equi-distant. The market-house to 
the left is on the Avenue. Between this market-house and the 
Potomac are the fine towers of the Smithsonian Institute. 
Continuing South to the Potomac, you come to the Ferry to 
Virginia, and the shipping piers 

Follow Out the Avenue to the Treasury, and beyond it are 
the President's House, the War and Navy Departments, 
General Grant's head-quarters, and the elegant residences of 
Lafayette Square, where live most of the ambassadors and rich 
officials. Beyond these a stream called Rock Creek falls 
through a deep valley to the Potomac, and on the other side of 
it is Georgetown. Another creek, immediately beneath the 
Capitol where you stand, is called the*Tiber ; it bends around 
the base of Capitol Hill, and, by a long detour nearly parallel 
with the Potomac, gets an outlet not very far from the mouth 
of Rock Creek. This Tiber makes, with a canal leading from 
it to the East Branch, an island of one-fourth the city!* 

All the- forts around or overlooking the city are dismantled, 
the guns taken out of them, the land resigned to its owners. 
Needy negro squatters, living around the forts, have built 
themselves shanties of the officers' quarters, pulled out the 
abattis for firewood, made cord-wood or joists out of the log 
platforms for the guns, and sawed up the great flag-staffs into 
quilting poles or bedstead posts. Still the huge parapets of the 
forts stand upright, and the paths left by the soldiers creep 
under the invisible gun muzzles. Old boots, blankets, and 
canteens rot and rust around the glacis ; the woods, cut down 
to give the guns sweep, are overgrown with shrubs and bushes. 
Nature is unrestingly making war upon War. The strolls out 
to these old forts are seedily picturesque. Freedmen, who 



THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT. 



641 



exist by selling old horse-shoes and iron spikes, live with their 
squatter families where, of old, the array sutler kept the can- 
teen ; but the grass is drawing its parallels nearer and nearer 
the magazines. Some old clothes, a good deal of dirt, and 
forgotten graves, make now the local features of the war. 

Meantime the too ambitious monument to the pater patrix 
stands like a stunted giant, the superfluous blocks at its base 
grown over with grass, and few approach it, even in curiosity. 
Its foundations are said to be defective, and no money has 
been voted toward building it this long time. A few boxes, in 
various parts of the country, receive dimes and quarters 
towards its completion, but, standing as it now does, a hundred 
and thirty feet in the air, it has probably reached its highest- 
I heard a humorous explanation of the failure of this monu- 
ment, from an Irishman. 

" They broke the Pope's block of stone," he said, " it was an 
onlucky act. The holy Father cursed the whole thing, and 
immediately the foundation settled." 

I have spent part of a day in the shaft and workshops of the 
Washington Monument, a mournful instance of the short life 
of public impulse, and of the defects in the machinery of mis- 
cellaneous private enterprise. 
This monument is already 
raised to the height of 175 
feet. It has already cost 
nearly $250,000, and is rais- 
ed to more than one-third its 
total height. The found- 
ations are perfectly secure, 
and capable of supporting all 
the height yet to be added. 
There are stones from all 
parts of the world ready to 
be inserted in the shaft or subsidiary temple ; but work has 
been suspended upon it for about twelve years. 

The monument was discouraged, because the people believed 
41 




WASHINGTON MONUMENT. 



642 ' SOCIAL SKETCHES. 

that the contributions, being dropped into Post-office boxes all 
over the country, were stolen, and never applied to the edifice, 
and also because the artists and art critics kept up a steady 
fire of deprecation upon the plan of the monument. This plan 
was an obelisk, surrounded with a Greek Temple. There is no 
notion, at present, of adding the temple, but the Monument 
Association hope to raise enough money to finish the obelisk. 
It is easy to do this, and it ought to be done ; for the unfinish- 
ed shaft in the Capital City is a record of popular impotence, 
worse than if a monument to Washington had never been 
begun. This age and people are no exception to the human 
passion for monumentalization. If ten thousand churches and 
schools would give twenty-five dollars a-piece, this monument 
could be finished. The interior of the shaft is of twenty-five 
feet diameter, between the inner sides of the walls, and so thick 
are the walls, that the exterior diameter is fifty-five feet. The 
material is marble from Maryland. Within there is a yawning 
chasm of shaft, very impressive to look up into, and see, at the 
farthest height, a scaffold hung, from which a rope droops 
dizzily, and on the floor the dampness splashes and the dark- 
ness lies all around the year, save when some melancholy 
visitor puts his head within, and feels dejected over the sus- 
pended gratitude of the land of Washington. I hope no more 
great monuments will be commenced, but I hope a feeling will 
be revived to see this one finished. The memorial stones, to 
decorate some portions of the shaft, represent all companies, 
lands, and ages — lava, from Vesuvius ; aerolites, shaken out 
of crazy satellites or planets ; rocks of copper and of porphyry; 
stones from Jerusalem and Mecca ; everything but the Pope's 
stone, which, not the builders, but the mob rejected. 

If the Washington monument ever be reared 600 feet high, 
according to the original plan, it will be of the weight of 
125,800,000 pounds ; the portion already completed exceeds 
80,000,000 pounds. 



45 



CHAPTER XXXYI. 



JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

We can get little comfort by consulting the early records 
of the country, to show that there were some bad things done 
in those days. There is less apology for evil in a great and 
prospered nation, than in a series of jarring colonies, where few 
local leaders sought after the revolution to remedy their 
desperate fortunes. Early in the history of the country we 
were without organization, authority, or means. Able men in 
those days had few resources, unless endowed with estates, or 
surrounded with family influence. But it never was true of 
the United States, that corruption got to be organized, flagrant 
and backed by a large part of public opinion, until a few years 
prior to the civil war. The Confederate Government was as 
corrupt at Richmond, considering its opportunities, as the 
Federal Government at Washington. Both were swindled by 
currency printers, contractors, quarter-masters, and beset by 
rapacious Congressmen, who endeavored to retard the general 
cause where they could not take the advantage. What is 
called the scalawag element in the South, has to some degree 
been the development of the stealing element at Richmond. 
In the North the big army contractors have gone to railroad 
building, and the naval harpies are trying to restore Ameri- 
can commerce with the old hulks which were four or five times 
paid for when chartered by the nation. 

It was also true at the close of the Revolutionary War, that 

643 



6'4 JOBBING COEYAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

contractors, clothes-furnishers, and others, endeavored to spoil 
the new government, but we can nearly count up on our fingers 
the early scandals in the history of our country. Let us look 
at some of them: 

1789. The State of Georgia was the first to inaugurate a 
land swindle. It sold out to three private companies pre- 
emption rights to tracts of land ; these companies were called 
the South Carolina Yazoo, the Virginia Yazoo, and the Ten- 
nessee Yazoo ; the whole amount ot land disposed of was fif- 
teen and a half million acres, and the sum agreed to be paid 
was upwards of $200,000. Subsequently the same lands were 
sold to other companies, because the first purchasers insisted 
upon making their payments in depreciated Georgia paper. Hence 
arose the controversy on the celebrated Yazoo claims, so called. 

1790. Mr. Jefferson, who is not good authority on a ques- 
tion of the Treasury, in the first administration, thus speaks 
ot what he believes to be corruption, under General Hamilton, 
after the Federal assumption of State debts : 

" The base scramble again. Couriers and relay horses by 
land, and swift-sailing pilot-boats by sea, were plying in all di- 
rections. Active partners and agents were associated and em- 
ployed in every State, town, and country neighborhood, and 
this paper was bought up at five shillings, and even as low as 
two shillings on the pound, before the holder knew that Con- 
gress had already provided for its redemption at par. Immense 
sums were thus filched from the poor and ignorant, and fortunes 
accumulated by those who had themselves been poor enough 
before." 

1790. Mr. Jefferson is authority for the statement that 
Robert Morris, and other advocates of the national assumption 
of the State debts, made a lobby amongst the Federal Con- 
gressmen, to concede for this point the latitude for the Capi- 
tol in 1790. Two Virginia members changed their votes on 
the financial subject ; therefore the seat of government was given 
to the South. If this was the case, both Morris and Hamilton 
were well punished for the intrigue. Mr. Hamilton closed his 



ORGANIZATON OP NATIONAL BANK. 645 

public career before the middle of his life, and Mr. Morris is 
commemorated in the local history of the seat of government 
as the victim of the most tremendous speculative failure ever 
recorded in that city. His houses, put up on the spot since 
called for his partner, Greenleaf s Point, tumbled to ruins be- 
fore the public buildings were complete, and he himself spent a 
venerable portion of his romantic history in the debtor's jail at 
Philadelphia. The funding bill was then adopted as an act of 
barter, and twelve millions of dollars were authorized to be 
borrowed to pay the foreign debt, and twenty-one millions, five 
hundred thousand dollars, to pay off the State debts. The 
tariff was immediately pushed up to meet these obligations, 
and here began the manipulation of duties in the interest of 
domestic manufacturers. 

1791. The same year that the Capital was conceded to the 
banks of the Potomac, Mr. Hamilton's proposition for a Na- 
tional Bank was brought forward. It passed the Senate in 
Philadelphia, without division. In the house it was attacked 
by James Madison and others, but it finally passed by a vote 
of 39 to 20. President Washington required the written 
opinions ot the members of his Cabinet, as to its constitution- 
ality, and Hamilton and Knox endorsed it with vigor, while 
Jefferson and Eandolph took the opposite side. Its charter 
was limited to twenty years, and its capital was to consist of 
$10,000,000, of which the United States subscribed 12,000,000. 
The bank was to be established in Philadelphia, and was to be 
managed by twenty-five directors. The bank stock was the 
favorite speculation of the day, and within a few hours after 
opening the books the whole amount was subscribed, with a 
surplus. Branches were established in the chief commercial 
towns of the republic. This bank and its successors, as we 
shall see further on, was assailed as one of the corrupt influ- • 
ences of the early period of the republic. 

1793. The first charge of general corruption was made in 
Congress by John F. Mercer, of Maryland ; he intimated that 
the first assumption of State debts had been dishonestly engin- 



646 JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

eered, and that members of the House had not been wholly 
guiltless. To this Theodore Sedgwick replied, saying that the 
ears of the House had already been more than once assailed by 
insinuations of the base conduct of individual members in 
speculating in their own measures. " If," said Sedgwick, " there 
be so base and infamous a character within these walls, if 
there is one member of this House who has been guilty of 
plundering his constituents in the manner represented, let his 
name be mentioned, let the man be pointed out." 

Another member admitted that speculation had been carried 
to a very great extent during the pendency of the funding 
system, but that could not be avoided. The matter 
was then dropped, but Secretary Hamilton was attacked 
by Mr. Giles, of Virginia, and charged with failing to account 
for upwards of a million and a half of the public money. He 
was called upon to explain this as well as his mismanagement 
and intrigue in the negotiation of loans. Hamilton replied 
that the alleged defalcations were made up by reckoning bonds 
as money, and omitting deposits, etc. Hamilton had, how- 
ever, borrowed too much money through the forwardness of 
the American bankers in Holland. Mr. Giles and his associ- 
ates introduced nine resolutions of censure, charging Hamilton 
with exceeding his powers, with dereliction of duty, with mis- 
appropriating loans, deviating from his instructions, and vio- 
lating the law. A debate followed in committee of the whole, 
and although Madison voted to censure Hamilton on all 
counts, the resolution of censure failed. 

1795. The first charge of personal bribery was made in 
1795, and was brought up on the question of a breach of priv- 
ilege. The charge was very similar to that made against 
Mr. Oakes Ames, nearly eighty years later. Two persons 
named Randall and Whitney, from Maryland and Vermont, 
respectively, had formed a scheme for obtaining from Congress, 
for the sum of $500,000, the right to purchase of the Indians 
twenty millions of acres, in the peninsula of Michigan. The 
proposed purchase was divided into forty shares, some of which 
were offered to members of Congress, who were guaranteed 



"credit mobilier" in 1796. 647 

that the shares would be taken off their hands if they should 
lose confidence in the speculation. Randall boasted that he 
had secured thirty members. Mr. Murray, of Maryland, ex- 
plained the attempt at bribery to the House, and Randall was 
ordered to be arrested and put on trial at the bar. His defence 
was that he had been misunderstood, and that his conduct was 
merely foolish and imprudent, and not corrupt. He was 
declared guilty of a high contempt, in attempting to influence 
members as to their legislative functions, and only 17 votes 
were cast against the resolution, amongst them Mr. Madison's ; 
he maintained that the members had no privilege against such 
attempts except in their own integrity. Randall was sentenced 
to be reprimanded by the Speaker, and was put in custody. 

1796. In 1796 a transaction in Congress of a disgraceful 
nature occurred, growing out of the Georgia or Yazoo land 
speculation, which would look, in our times, quite like a piece 
of corruption. Mr. Baldwin, of Connecticut, of the lower 
House, had received a memorial, to be presented to Congress, 
asking it to do nothing recognizing the validity of the Yazoo 
sale until an investigation could be had. Amongst the Sen- 
ators who had personal interest in this Georgia speculation 
were Frederick Frelinghuysen, the grand-uncle of the present 
Senator from New Jersey, and James Gunn, Senator from 
Georgia. Gunn, who was represented to have been a fire- 
eater, demanded that Baldwin show him the memorial, before 
its presentation, and give the names of the signers up to his 
vengeance. When Baldwin refused, Gunn sent him a chal- 
lenge, through the precious Frelinghuysen aforesaid. Baldwin 
laid the challenge before the House, and the matter was re- 
ferred to a committee, which reported that both Gunn and 
Frelinghuysen had been guilty of a breach of privilege. The 
land-speculating Senators made apologies to the House, and 
the matter was allowed to languish. 

1797. The first case of the expulsion of a Senator was that 
of William Blount, of Tennessee, a very popular man in that 
new State. He was exposed by President Adams in 1797, 



648 JOBBING COEYAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

Who sent to Congress some papers showing the condition of 
the country concerning Spanish intrigues in the south-west, 
and amongst these papers was the copy of a letter from Blount 
to a Cherokee Indian agent, written while the' former was 
governor of the American territory south of the Ohio. The agent 
sent the letter to the President, who asked the British Minister 
what it meant. It then appeared that Blount had played the 
traitor to the British, in order to right himself in a desperate 
land speculation. He had designed selling his lands to an 
English Company, and was afraid that the non-commercial 
French nation would come into possession of them, by a re- 
transfer, before he could complete the sale. To anticipate 
this, Blount had proposed to raise a force of barbaric back- 
woodsmen and Indians, to co-operate with a British naval 
force, and put the English into possession on the Gulf. This 
scheme had avarice for its motive and cool treason for its in- 
strument. The House of Representatives voted to impeach 
Blount, and the Senate put him under bonds amounting to 
$50,000. The House also asked that he be " sequestered " 
from his seat in the interim, which the Senate interpreted 
to mean expulsion, and forthwith set Governor Blount outside 
the door, with much less delicacy than the Senate lately 
showed Messrs. Caldwell, Pomeroy, and Harlan. Blount's 
sureties, one of whom was his brother, surrendered him into 
custody, but the case was postponed until the next session, and 
after the fashion of Mr. Colfax at South Bend, a great re- 
ception was prepared for Blount at Knoxville ; he was elected 
to the State Senate, and chosen president thereof. Blount's 
brother, in the House, meantime sent a blackguard letter and 
challenge to Mr. Thatcher, of Massachusetts. Strife ran so 
high at this period that gentlemen of different politics would 
not speak to each other on the street. Senator Blount died 
unexpectedly, before his constituents had an opportunity to 
disgrace themselves by giving him enlarged honors. 

The first great scandal against a public official was made 
public while the Capital was pitched in Philadelphia, in 1797. 



INTRIGUES OP ALEX. HAMILTON. 649 

Its object was no less a personage than Alexander Hamilton. 
One Callender had published a book containing a quantity of 
correspondence and documents which seemed to show that 
Hamilton and one Reynolds had been buying up old claims 
against the United States, and that the latter had received 
advances of money from the former to make these purchases. 
Reynolds, and a" man named Clingman, had some time before 
been prosecuted for perjury, and for seeking to obtain fraud- 
ulent payment from the Treasury of an alleged debt due them 
from the Government. By Hamilton's influence the Controller 
of the Treasury stopped the prosecution. This Reynolds was 
the son of a Revolutionary officer, and some letters which he 
and his fascinating wife possessed seemed to indicate that a 
dark affair was going on. Three members of Congress who had 
explored the matter, went frankly to General Hamilton and 
laid the proofs before him, and required an explanation. This 
was given but it was hardly less astounding than if Hamilton 
had been detected in corruption. He confessed to having paid 
one thousand dollars hush money to Reynolds not on account 
of any peculation, but to avoid exposure in a very shameless 1 
intrigue between Hamilton and the wife of Reynolds. Hamil- 
ton resolved to take a desperate step and save his official honor, 
at the expense of his private reputation and happiness. He 
published certified copies of the correspondence. We take a 
few paragraphs of his tolerably bulky pamphlet from an auto- 
graph copy owned by William Duane, and inscribed with his 
name, March 28, 1799. The title is " Observations on Certain 
Documents Contained in Ms. V. and VI. of ' The History of 
the United States for the year 1797,' in which the charge of 
speculation against Alexander Hamilton, late Secretary of the 
Treasury, is fully refuted. Written by Himself. Philadel- 
phia, printed for John Fenno, by John Bioren. 1797." 

Hamilton shows in this pamphlet all his graces of literary 
composition, and strikes from the shoulder at the outset : 

" The charge against me," he says, " is a connection with 
one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary spec- 



650 JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

illation. My real crime is an amorous connection with his 
wife, for a considerable time with his privity and connivance, 
if not originally brought on by a combination between the hus- 
band and wife, with the design to extort money from me." 

The next salient point is this, well- worded : 

" This confession is not made without a blush, I cannot be 
the apologist of any vice because the ardor of passion may have 
made it mine. I can never cease to condemn myself for the 
pang which it may inflict in a bosom eminently entitled to all 
my gratitude, fidelity, and love. But that bosom will approve 
that, even at so great an expense, I should effectually wipe 
away a more serious stain from a name which it> cherishes 
with no less elevation than tenderness." 

These must, indeed, have been hard passages to commit to 
print, and it argues nobly for woman that, having been assured 
from the lips of her husband of his offences against her, she 
could forgive him for his honor's sake, and, when he came home 
wounded to die, receive him in her arms as if he were stainless. 
Men never do these acts of forgiveness. - 

The gist of Hamilton's confession is in these paragraphs : 

" Some time in the summer of the year 1791 a woman called 
at my house, in the city of Philadelphia, and asked to speak 
with me in private. I attended her into a room apart from the 
family. With a seeming air of affliction, she informed me 
that she was the daughter of a Mr. Lewis, sister to a Mr. G. 
Livingston, of the State of New York, and wife of a Mr. Rey- 
nolds, whose father was in the Commissary Department during 
the war with Great Britain ; that her husband, who, for a long 
time, had treated her very cruelly, had lately left her to live 
with another woman, and in so destitute a condition that, though 
desirous of returning to her friends, she had not the means ; 
that knowing I was a citizen of New York, she had taken the 
liberty to apply to my humanity for assistance. 

" I replied that her situation was a very interesting one ; 
that I was disposed to afford her assistance to convey her to 
her home, but this at the moment not being convenient to me 



alex. Hamilton's famous intrigue. 651 

(which was the fact), I must request the place of her residence, 
to which I should bring or send a small supply of money. She 
told me the street and the number of the house where she 
lodged. In the evening I put a bank bill in my pocket and 
went to the house. I inquired for Mrs. Reynolds and was 
shown up stairs, at the head of which she met me and con- 
ducted me into a bedroom. 1 took the bill out of my pocket 
and gave it to her. Some conversation ensued, from which it 
was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation 
would be acceptable. 

" After this I had frequent meetings with her, most of them 
at my own house, Mrs. Hamilton, with her children, being 
absent on a visit to her father. 

" In the course of a short time she mentioned to me that her 
husband had solicited a reconciliation, and affected to consult 
me about it. I advised to it, and was soon after informed that 
it had taken place." 

The next thing was that the husband wrote to Hamilton that 
he had discovered the intrigue, and that his heart was crushed ; 
but he wrote shockingly bad English. He reproached Hamil- 
ton with having taken advantage of his wife's necessities, and 
Mrs. Reynolds wrote that he had meant to assassinate the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury. Hamilton found himself considerably 
demoralized. He says : 

" In the workings of human inconsistency, it was very pos- 
sible that the same man might be corrupt enough to compound 
for his wife's chastity, and yet have sensibility enough to be 
restless in the situation, and to hate the cause of it." 

Of course, after Hamilton let the real facts out right can- 
didly, his enemies discredited him. 

" It is showed," he says, "that the dread of the disclosure 
of an amorous connection was not a sufficient cause for my 
humility, and that I had nothing to lose as to my reputation- 
for chastity, concerning which the world had fixed a previous 
opinion." 

He goes on to show that, having first black-mailed him for 



652 JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

nearly ten thousand dollars, the panel-thieves then accused 
him of taking money from the Treasury, and entering into 
speculation with Reynolds and others. This pamphlet is signed 
Alexander Hamilton, Philadelphia, July, 1797, and in the 
appendix to it are all the amorous epistles to and fro, which 
must have made " live" reading when they first saw the light. 

1798. The House of Representatives, during this session 
refused to pass a resolution previously adopted in the Senate to 
authorize Thomas Pinckney to receive certain presents which 
in accordance with custom had been tendered him by the Courts 
of Madrid and London at the close of his missions thither, and 
which he had refused to accept because of the Constitutional 
provision relating to presents from foreign powers. The reso- 
lution was rejected on grounds of public policy as was after- 
wards declared by unanimous vote of the House.* 

We will now make a step out of the past, and come to a 
memorable claim of the present day — that of Mrs. Gaines : 

Mrs. Gaines is the great female character in New Orleans. 
She is a small, plump, bright-eyed woman, and she has been 
the heroine of the very heroic law suit which she has person- 
ally conducted, raising money for the purpose to the amount 
of half a million, recovering nearly a million, and. with all the 
probabilities in her favor of getting a million more. But, if 
she were to get what she would receive under other conditions 
than those of democratic public opinion, she would possess half 
the city of New Orleans in its most valuable part, and be a 
wealthier woman than Miss Burdett-Coutts, whom Wellington 
endeavored to marry out of covetousness to her fortune. 

The home of this lady is in New York City, but she spends 
much of her time in New Orleans, where she has strong friends 
and strong enemies, almost equal in number. Her suit has 
involved many of her intimate friends, from whom she has 
borrowed money to pay lawyers' fees and court fees. Her 
second husband, General Gaines, believed implicitly in the 
merits of her case, and gave her $200,000 to fight 



* Additional matter illustrating this Chapter may be found in Chap. VII. 



MRS. GAINES AND HER CAREER. 653 

it out. She has been twice married, and to excellent 
men both times ; and I was told that the brother of her first 
husband had helped her with nearly the whole of his funds. 
There is a dash, piquance, and nimbleness about this woman 
which distinguishes her as one of the queens of her sex. She 
is said to be about 60 years of age, but would pass for 40 ; and, 
while her education is defective, she is a natural authoress and 
lawyer, and can write a stinging brief where sauce and justice 
are mixed together. 

She is just the sort of woman to be identified with New 
Orleans — Provincialism and Cosmopolitanism mingling in her 
as amongst many of these old 7tabitans. Her mother had married 
a French bigamist, and, discovering the fact after she reached 
New Orleans, presumed to marry again the great Daniel Clarke, 
one of the wealthiest men of the South. He was one of the 
earliest property-holders in New Orleans, and represented that 
territory in Jefferson's administration. Clarke was smitten 
with the beauty of the French lady, and contracted a secret 
marriage with her — made secret in order to anticipate a di- 
vorce from his French predecessor. But, while he was absent 
in Washington City, his relatives and connections, who had 
expected to get his money, told him that his wife Avas unfaith- 
ful, and hired her lawyer to tell her that her marriage with 
Clarke was not legal. Having a natural affection for man, the 
French lady proposed to take a third husband. This offended 
Clarke, and it seemed to confirm the lies which had been said 
against his lady ; and meantime his daughter was born — the 
present Mrs. Gaines — for whom he maintained affection, so 
that, while he let the wife slide, he gave a very considerable 
sum of money to a man in Wilmington, Del., to be used 
and applied to educate his daughter, and at her maturity to 
present her with the principal. Thus the banks of the Brandy- 
wine, where Thomas LaFayette, Harry McComb, and your humble 
correspondent passed their youth, became the playground of the 
future Mrs. Gaines. As they had no penitentiary in the State, 
and never whipped white people at the post, the custodian of 



654 JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

the baby saw no business reason why he should not squander 
her money. He did squander it, and history has made no 
mention of the innumerable fried chickens, roast capons, and 
deviled crabs which this unfaithful guardian devoured out of the 
inheritance of the babe in the woods. A Mr. Croasdale, who 
is the best journalist in Delaware, some time ago collected 
the story of Mrs. Gaines's childhood in Wilmington, and it wa.^ 
published, over another name, in the Galaxy Magazine. 

When the guardian had squandered all the money, and both 
his liver and conscience were disordered, some faint recollec- 
tion of her childhood inspired a dream in the little ward. 

She dreamed that her father was another person than the 
man she called father ; that he was rich and lived in a distant 
State, amongst negroes, molasses, and such other things as 
children like. She' came down to breakfast the next morning, 
where the unfaithful guardian was thinking, in a morose way, 
how fortunate it was for him that the State had no peniten- 
tiary, and how unfortunate that there were no other little girls 
to be let out with endowments. Unhappy Delawarean. For 
him no longer the fried oyster gamboled, or the chicken frica- 
seed ! While he was thinking over this thing the little girl 
told her dream. He immediately fainted, and they had to bor- 
row some old Delaware rye, next door, to bring him to con- 
sciousness. 

As he came to, he said," Myra [he pronounced it Myrie, as 
did the future gallant husband of the little girl], who has been 
putting that nonsense into your head ?" He answered his own 
question by confessing, like an honest criminal in one of the 
fairy books. 

The little girl was at once put in possession of a law suit. 
She became a heroine, married two husbands, and has living 
grandchildren. Both her husbands were devoted men, who be- 
lieved in her claim ; she does the same, righting it out. 

I have a theory that Nature's chief use for us in this life is 
employment ; and that, like the flies which convert into healthy 
motion the mortification and decay in the atmosphere, we are 



PUBLIC SERVICE VS. LOBBY. 655 

all right enough when something is given us to do. But Na- 
ture makes a very unhappy fly of us when she leaves us a vast 
law suit, and at the same time impresses us with the fact that 
we are after our rights. Who would know much about Daniel 
Clarke, or the man in Delaware, if it were not for Mrs. 
Gaines ? 

To show how the public service and the lobby come into col- 
lision, it may be well after reciting such matters as the above, 
to relate a conversation which I liad in 1873 with one of the 
most gallant and distinguished men in the army, whose name 
I shall not give, because he might be injured by the political 
harpies of that service. 

" What is our relative position amongst the navies of the 
earth ?" said I. 

" We stand not above the sixth in rank. 

" Great Britain could whip all the navies of the earth to-day,. 
one after the other. Her salvation lies in keeping up her com- 
mercial supremacy. I have seen a single vessel in her navy, 
in the China Seas, which could take in detail, the whole Ameri- 
can fleet, and beat every ship successively. The iron-clad to 
which I allude cost about $1,500,000, whereas we have just 
voted $3,000,000 to build ten ships. Next to England comes 
France in the perfectness of her navy. Russia and Spain have 
enormously improved their efficiency upon the seas. North 
Germany, since she has acquired seaports, has become very 
ambitious, and not only are her vessels-of-war remarkable, but 
her naval officers are of a remarkably shrewd and vigilant de- 
scription. Even Turkey has a better navy yard than the Uni- 
ted States, strange as it may appear." 

" Do you think that we are defenseless in our great cities by 
reason of the prostration of our navy ?" 

" Well, New York City might be defended, because of its 
remarkable natural defenses. A ship or two sunk in the chan- 
nel, at the Narrows, or in the Lower Bay, would prevent an 
entire fleet from getting up to the city ; but an iron-clad navy 
could go right into Boston harbor or into Portsmouth or San 



656 JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

Francisco. A few months ago, we barely missed getting into 
a war with Spain, and the State Department had really got us 
right in, when suddenly it was suggested that we examine our 
naval resources for the moment. Word was sent that three 
or four ships might be ready in twelve months, and two or 
three more in eighteen months. It is needless to say that 
we backed right out of the war matter ; and the Govern- 
ment, to-day if it knows anything, knows that even Spain 
could drive right into us, because now-a-days men do not count, 
but mechanism in ships does all the business. Anticipating 
trouble with us on the Cuban account, Admiral Paolo, now 
Spanish Minister, visited the United States, and took an inven- 
tory of the armored navy. He had all the points ; and, by 
George ! we would have been humiliated in the estimation of 
the earth. You see, about 1864 or '5, we were the first naval 
power in the world, having gotten up the earliest iron-clads. 
But that navy was created for an emergency, constructed of 
green timber, and a late investigation shows that every shot 
fired into those old rotten iron-clads would have crumbled the 
whole framework. 

The English and other foreigners built upon our suggestions, 
and they have made a series of ships which can steam 18 knots 
an hour. Prior to the war, our old wooden vessels were also 
the best afloat. The Minnesota, and such other great ships in 
the American navy, made good speed, and gave our sailors 
confidence ; but, as we stand, to-day, we must keep mum, or 
be terribly humiliated." 

" What is the best opinion in the navy — 1 mean amongst 
the large and high-minded officers — on the proper method of 
building a ship-of-war, whether in a navy-yard or in private 
yards ?" 

" There is but one way," responded my informant, " of con- 
structing a legitimate vessel-of-war, and that is in the National 
navy-yards. Private shipbuilders work only to complete a job, 
get their money, and show the ship, which will be good enough 
for a short period. But the greatest thing to be looked to in a 
ship-of-war is the timber ; which must be thoroughly seasoned ; 



OUR SHIPBUILDING. 657 

for green timber warps, rots, and is unable to hold its outer 
armor in a very little time. The English build of that mag- 
nificent teak ; and I have seen, in the Japanese Seas, one of 
Nelson's old ships, which had come out in eighty days from 
Great Britain, as souud and buoyant as he found it at Trafalgar. 
"We built for an emergency, in private navy-yards, of green 
oak, which has no longevity. The corrupt shipbuilding in- 
terests of the country press forward whenever we want new 
ships, and, under the tariff system, rob the Government, and, 
under the modern job system, carry off the prize from the 
navy-yards, where we should have work of the best class slowly 
and surely made. The tariff interests, in the estimation of 
the honest officers of the navy, will some day be our scorn as 
a people, and get us such a flogging that we will cut the throats 
of these jobbers in the public necessities. The great iron-clad 
ships of Russia, Prussia, and Spain have been built by the En- 
glish, under free-trade, and the work superintended by Com- 
missioners from the respective nations which wanted the ves- 
sels. We cannot build a ship-of-war for our lawful needs in 
any foreign ship-yards, without an act of Congress, and that 
act never will be granted under the horrible system of the 
modern tariff. I have heard naval men say that, if the United 
States got into a war, and was flogged out of its life, so that 
the whole bluster would be taken out of her, and we should 
have to begin, like France, from the bottom, and work out an 
honest salvation, we would be better off. Something calami- 
tous is necessary to stop the unpatriotic excesses of our busi- 
ness people." 

I asked the gentleman who spoke thus intelligently what the 
leading men of the navy thought of Secretary Robeson and 
Admiral Porter. 

" For Robeson," said he, " there is such contempt that I do 
not care to relate the character of it. Instead of demanding, 
like a man, that Congress give the country a navy sufficient to 
protect us, he begs for everything, as if he were apologizing 
for making the demand. 
^42 



658 JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

" Admiral Porter reduced himself in the estimation of all 
men ol courage when he wrote those sycophantic letters to the 
President. But he is equal to his position. He always was a 
shrewd, prying, suggestive fellow, and no portion of the navy 
lias come under his supervision but he has improved it. There 
is no fear of him. Robeson is a mere shyster, and the civil 
head of the navy is the disgrace and contempt of every genuine 
officer in it. We have no navy whatever. Every one of those 
monitors and iron-clads built during the war is rotted, and an 
appropriation of $3,000,000 will & nothing more than build 
some fair iron-clad coasters for defense." 

Some of the scandals so-called of modern Washington par- 
take of the marvelous and get little consideration from people 
who demand testimony as well as theory. Let me give an in- 
stance : 

You have probably met, amongst your acquaintances, this 
kind of a man : An agreeable, decorous, thrifty well-to-do gen- 
tleman, who will talk with you intelligently about the growing 
evils of the country and of the general corruption of politics f 
but will, at the same time, inflexibly pursue his private pur- 
poses against the Government, under the belief that, in the de- 
struction imminent over everybody, the best way to anticipate 
it is to make one's stake and share so big that it can bear one 
up above the common calamity. The country is full of people 
who deprecate corruption, but do not arrest their personal 
scheme, which is a part of it. 

The gentleman in this case referred to was taken with a 
communicative mood. He knew perfectly well that he could 
tell me nothing of consequence which I would not print, 
but it is queer that very many careful men have some- 
where concealed about them a hidden desire to give points 
against their class to newspaper men. Said this gentle- 
man : 

" I am one of the oldest engravers in this country. There 
is an investigation one day to be made into the currency of 
the. country, which will startle you, and your newspapers and 



SOME OF THE CLEVER WAYS. 659 

all their readers. There is a $10 bill. Take it, — look at it ! 
Do you see anything notable about it ?" 

I looked the bill all over, and then the man all over, and 
saw nothing to excite a remark in either. " There is nothing 
particular about that bill," he said, " except that it is counter- 
feit. There are eighteen distinct counterfeits on the $10 bill, 
and, as an engraver, I know that they represent eighteen dif- 
ferent counterfeiting gangs. I got this bill from a street-car 
conductor in New York. I got into his car, and, as he came 
along, I said, ' My friend, I am sorry to ask you for so much 
change, but really I have nothing less than $20.' ' !' said 
he, ' I'll oblige you,' and, in a smiling way, he gave me this 
bill and a quantity of 50-cent fractional currency. I put the 
whole away in my pocket, and, being an engraver, I got to 
looking at the number 37 on the lantern window of the car. 
Thought I to myself, ' That's a remarkably handsome 7 for a 
common painter to make.' You know that an engraver notices 
such things. Well, that evening I went into the Astor House, 
and, going up to the fine, old, white-haired man who sells 
cigars there, and is known to everybody in New York, I ten- 
dered him one of the 50-cent papers. Old Jimmy looked at it 
and said to me, ' I am sorry, Mr. Robinson, but that stamp is 
counterfeit. It's a very well-executed one, but I have nothing 
better to do in my leisure time than to look over such things.' 
At this Jimmy handed me the stamp, and I looked at it, and 
then at the others, and, sure enough, they were all counterfeit. 
I quietly stepped outside the Astor House, and looked for No. 
37, amongst the cars. I found that the conductors ran eight 
hours off and on, and that my man would not come on till next 
morning. There I found, at the appointed time, my conduc- 
tor, and stepped up to him, and said in a low tone, ' Young 
man, you changed a bill for me yesterday, and gave me a 
quantity of counterfeit money. Now I want you to take it 
back without any noise.' He affected to grow indignant, but I 
said,*' Stop ! stop ! Do you see that policeman ? If you don't 
return me in good money the amount which you changed for 



660 JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

me, I will have you under arrest in two minutes !' Well, it 
was interesting to see the promptness with which that ' shover 
of the queer ' gave me all of my money, and forgot to ask for 
his own. 

" Mr. Gath, you newspaper men know nothing whatever 
about the duplication of United States Bonds, and about the 
quantity of counterfeit scrip afloat. If you, as a newspaper- 
man, were to go to Gen. Spinner and to the heads of the 
Treasury, and ask how much counterfeit currency was in cir- 
culation, they would probably tell you 10 per cent. ; but 
I tell you, as an engraver, that they have admitted to me that 
there is 25 per cent., or one quarter of the whole amount of the 
stamps current in this country, which are fraudulent. Do you 
know, sir, that the postal currency is renewed six times every 
year ? That is the case, and see the possibilities for its in- 
creased duplication and counterfeiting. We could better afford 
to pay 50 per cent, premium, and use gold, than have to deal 
as we do with a lot of paper which is beyond the control, to a 
great extent, of the Government officials. The extravagantly 
high prices, and the corruption in our politics and life, hinge 
upon the currency. The duplication of the United States 
bonds will sOme day be found such an alarming matter that it 
will bring the whole country to its feet. That crime began in 
the Treasury so far back as Chase's time. John Covode and 
others in Congress made strenuous efforts to expose it, but 
they were gagged by the gavel and a party majority. An 
official, who at that time was connected with the printing, had, 
in some way, got a grip upon the Secretary, and could not be 
budged from his place by any power in the country. His ac- 
counts were short one year $83,000, and he could not tell 
where the money had gone. They kept after, him, however, 
and, on one occasion, lie appeared before the examiners with 
his arms full of bonds, and throwing them down, said, ' There 
are your $63,000 !' Now, there was a press used for printing 
at that time, and it ran repeatedly in the night. The official 
himself was seen to emerge after dark, on two occasions, with 



MAGNITUDE OF LOBBY PLUNDER. 661 

a great tin box in his hand, which he put into his buggy and 
carried away. Now, how much duplication of bonds do you 
suppose it required to make $63,000 worth of coupons so as to 
equalize that account ?" 

" Several hundred thousand, I suppose." . 

" No, sir ; it took between $18,000,000 and $19,000,000 
of bonds ; and about that time happened the first duplica- 
tion.' " 

I looked suddenly into the old gentleman's eyes, and was in 
great doubt whether I was speaking to an intelligent lunatic or 
a great reformer. 

If one-tenth of the propositions annually considered in the 
committees of Congress was to be passed, the burden of tax- 
ation would be felt immediately at every fireside of the coun- 
try, and it is much to be feared that the people will never be 
sufficiently earnest until the iron enters into the flesh, and job- 
bery makes them howl. 

In order to give an idea of the magnitude of the plunder in- 
volved in the schemes of the lobby, which have been defeated 
in the Congress of 1873, Senator Chandler has employed 
some of his leisure moments to make out the following list of 
attempted steals : 

Soldiers' Bounty Bill, . . . $400,000,000 

Agricultural Lands bill/ .• . 90,000,000 

Cotton Tax refunding, . . . 72,000,000 

Compound interest to States, . 32,000,000 

Australian subsidy, ...,./ 5,000,000 

Oriental subsidy, .... 13,000,000 

Ship-yard subsidy, .... 6,000,000 

Other subsidies, .... 5,000,000 

The two per cent, job, . . . 1,500,000 



Total, ... . . $624,500,000 

The Soldiers' Bounty Bill and the Agricultural Lands bill 
were passed by the House, but squelched by the Senate. The 



662 



JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 



Treasury has had a narrow escape of several of these plunder- 
ing schemes. Taking into account the stupendous jobs that 
have been carried through, with the aid of an unscrupulous 
lobby, plain folk may well stand aghast at the costliness of 
Congressional legislation. 

Those members of Congress who are always looking out for 
a " spec." have come to despise the constituency. They see 
that the people soon forget a dishonored public man, and hence 
the audacious villainy known as back pay passed the Congress 
of 1873, its champions not scrupling. to register themselves in 
black and white. In order to involve the whole government, 
judicially and administratively, in this villainy, the general 
pay of all was increased and made retroactive. 

The following table shows the new salaries provided by the 
bill. The. increased salaries of the Speakers of the House and 
of all other officials took effect on the 4th of March : 



The President, . ... 

Vice-President, ....... 

Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 
Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 
Cabinet officers, . ' . . . • . 
Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury, State and In 
terior Departments, .... 

Supervising Architect of the Treasury, 
Examiner of Claims in State Department, 
Solicitor of the Treasury, . 
Commissioner of Agriculture, 
Commissioner of Customs, 
Auditor of the Treasury, . . 
Commissioner of the Land-Office, 
Assistant Postmaster-General, i . 
Superintendent Money Order System, 
Superintendent Foreign Mails, . - 
Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
Senators, Representatives, and Delegates, 



$50,000 
10,000 
10,500 
10,000 
10,000 

6,000 
5,000 
4,000 
4,000 
4,000 
4,000 
4,000 
4,000 
4,000 
4,000 
4,000 
10,000 
7,500 



REASONS FOR THE BACK-PAY GRAB. 663 

» 

The salaries of all the clerks, doorkeepers, messengers, and 
other employees of the House were increased from 15 to 25 per 
cent. 

All sorts of ingenious excuses had been manufactured, and 
were ready at hand, to defend back pay ; amongst other pleas 
was that against the old mileage system. 

Under the system of mileage the grossest inequality in the 
compensation of members of Congress has always prevailed. 
Just before the war the father of the present Senator Bayard, 
of Delaware, who received about $200 mileage, sat by" Duke" 
Gwinn, of California, who got $19,000. To make the matter 
more uneqal and unjust the fact was that, although receiving 
this immense amount on account of travel, Mr. Gwinn actually 
did not go to Callifornia for years. After the war when 
Reverdy Johnson was Senator from Maryland, he received 
$128 mileage for a Congress, while Messrs. Nye and Stewart, 
of Nevada, received about $10,000 apiece. A few years ago so 
much complaint was made about this unjust discrimination 
between members, that a modification of the mileage rates 
was established, but it has still worked very unequally. 

It appears that for the Congress just expired the mileage 
paid 'to Senators from the States named was as follows : Cali- 
fornia, $1,029.60 ; Oregon, $6,492.80 ; Nevada, $3,513.60 ; 
Texas, $3,000 ; Louisiana, $2,531 ; Arkansas, $2,400 ; Min- 
nesota, $2,475.25 ; Kansas, $2,352.10 ; Nebraska, $2,147.20 ; 
Mississippi, $2,160. 

The idea of making an Omnibus bill to include with the long 
talked-of increase for the President, the Supreme Court Judges, 
and the Heads of Departments, the never before talked-of in- 
crease for members of Congress, apparently originated with 
Butler, of Massachusetts, the Guy Fawkes of Congress. He 
brought the bill back from the Judiciary Committee, on the 
7th of February, 1873, with a long report, — historical, argu- 
mentative, and didactic, — in which he labored hard to prove 
that there were strong reasons of justice, morals, and public 
economy for raising the salary to $8,000 per annum. In the 



664 JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

same report he advocated the increase of the President's salary 
to $50,000, and proposed to raise the pay of the Judges and 
the heads of Departments to $8,000. His bill to accomplish 
all this was recommitted without action. Some time before, 
Sargent had tried to put an amendment on the Executive and 
Legislative Appropriation bill, raising the President's salary to 
$50,000. Dawes, who was in the chair, ruled it to be in 
order, but an appeal was taken, and the House, by a vote of 
60 yeas to 67 nays, refused to sustain the ruling. 

Butler's next move was t@ get his bill hitched on to an ap- 
priation bill. He made the first effort to accomplish this on 
Feb. 11, when he moved to suspend the rules so as to instruct 
the Appropriations Committee to bring in the bill as a part of 
the Miscellaneous Appropriation bill, then about to be reported 
to the House. He was beaten by a vote of 81 yeas to 119 
nays, but he gained a point — he got a showing of hands ; he 
knew the strength of his forces, and could see how many 
recruits ne must get to win. He had foreseen that it was es- 
sential to secure the help of the outgoing members, who num- 
bered nearly 100, and there was only one way to .do this : by 
allowing them to share in the profits of the proposed raid on 
the Treasury. He therefore inserted the words, " including 
members of the XLIId Congress," the effect of which was to 
make the increase retroactive — going back two years. 

Up to this time comparatively few members had faith in the 
process of the movement, and very little had been said about 
it in the informal canvasses in the lobbies and cloak rooms, 
which influence the disposition of bills far more than the 
debates upon the floor. Now it was seen that the bill had a 
strong backing of pledged supporters, and an active canvass for 
re 9 cruits began. Late in the night of Monday the 25th, Butler 
sprung his bill upon the House, as an amendment to the Ex- 
ecutive, Legislative, and Judicial Appropriation bills, which 
had come back from the Senate with amendments. No one 
but the friends of the measure had notice of his intention. A 
large number of members had gone home on the assurance of 



HOW THE BACK-PAY BILL WAS CARRIED THROUGH. 665 

Garfield that the bill would be called up only to get it in place, 
and that he expected no action upon it. Garfield protested, 
but Butler insisted on a vote on his amendment, and carried it 
by a vote of 71 to 67, on a vote by tellers in Committee of the 
Whole. The Credit Mobilier debate intervened next day, and 
it was Friday before the question came up again. Butler's 
amendment, adopted in Committee ot the Whole, was rejected 
by the House, on a call of the yeas and nays, by a vote of 69 
to 121. Butler changed his vote to No, in order to move a re- 
consideration. 

Next morning he made the motion, and promised if it was 
carried to admit an amendment, prepared by Sargent, fixing 
the salary at $6,500, with no allowance for traveling expenses. 
This seemed a fair proposition, and the recommendation was 
carried without much opposition. Sargent offered his amend- 
ment, but by the time it began to dawn upon the minds of the 
members who opposed an increase, that, if any change were 
made in the salary, the whole question would, in the end, go 
to a Conference Committee of. six men, who could put in any 
amount they pleased, and then force the House to agree to 
their report, or run some risk of losing the entire Appropriation 
bill, which would make an extra session necessary. Sar- 
gent's amendment narrowly escaped defeat, the vote being 100 
to 97. Amendments offered by Garfield were adopted, raising 
the salaries of all the clerks in the House, and adding 15 per 
cent, to the pay of all other employees, and adding $2,000 a 
year to the salaries of the Assistant Secretaries of the General 
Departments. 

The bill went to the Senate, and when the question arose on 
concurring in the salary admendment, some Senators opposed 
it because it did not increase their pay enough, and others 
because they thought it wrong to make any increase. • Both 
these elements of opposition united to defeat a motion to con- 
cur. The vote stood 23 to 36. 

The bill then went, of necessity, to a conference committee. 
Speaker Blaine now took a hand in the game, and appointed as 
the House conferees Garfield, Butler, and Randall, knowing 



QQQ JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

that the two latter were in favor of a larger increase of salary 
than the House had, at any time, endorsed. They were both 
advocates of a beaten proposition, and it was in violation of a 
well-recognized principle of parliamentary practice to appoint 
either of them on the Committee. The Senate conferees, 
named by the Vice-President, were all high-salary men, who 
insisted that $6,500 was not enough, and would be less than 
the Pacific Coast Senators got already, with their mileage. 
The Conference agreed to put another $1,000 on, making the 
salary $7,500, and they restored Butler's provision for the 
payment of actual traveling expenses, and retained the retro- 
active clause, dating the increase back to March 4, 1871. The 
President's salary, and those of the other officials, they left as 
passed by the House. The report was made to the House on 
Monday morning, March 3. It was vehemently denounced by 
Farnsworth and others, and freely defended, on the ground 
that the Senators were so stubborn that the House conferees 
had to yield for fear of losing the bill. The shameful retro- 
active clause did not find a single apologist, either in this or 
in any previous debate. It was vigorously assailed and de- 
nounced, but no one had the hardihood to say a word in its 
favor. Everybody knew that it was a barefaced robbery of 
the Treasury of nearly $1,500,000— a bribe of $5,000 a piece 
to induce outgoing members to vote to increase the pay of 
their successors. The provision doubling the President's 
salary escaped with very little criticism. Members were so 
much, occupied with the question of their own pay that they 
gave small attention to the portions of the bill relating to other 
officials. 

The conference report was finally adopted by the House by 
yeas, 103 ; nays, 94. This was a fair test vote, although the 
high salary men, tricky to the last, tried to make it appear 
otherwise by falsely saying that the bill would be lost if the 
report was rejected. The effect of rejecting the report would 
have been to send the bill to a new conference committee, 
which could have reported back in an hour with the salary 



THE EFFECT OF THE BACK-PAY GRAB. 667 

amendment stricken ont. Every member who voted yea must, 
therefore, be held to have favored the salary grab, retroactive 
clause and all. It was late Sunday night before a vote was 
had in the Senate on adopting the report. The result was 
yeas, 36 ; nays, 27. The bill was signed by the President the 
same night. Under the retroactive provision dating the in- 
creased pay to Congressmen back two years, every member re- 
ceived $.5,000 as extra compensation for services in the Forty- 
second Congress, less sum already drawn by him as mileage. 
The amount of money taken from the Treasury for this pur- 
pose we cannot give with accuracy, because we do not know 
the exact amount of the mileage to be deducted. At a moder- 
ate estimate it was $1,400,000. 

No justification was attempted in either the Senate or the 
House for elating back the increased salary. It was so dis- 
graceful a proceeding that it admitted of no defense. The 
members of Congress, in accepting their offices, agreed to 
serve for the salary provided by law. On the last day but one 
of their term of office, they voted themselves. nearly $5,000 
apiece as additional pay. They had the power to do it, and 
are amenable to no punishmant except such as their constitu- 
ents may provide for them at the next election ; but their con- 
duct in a moral point of view is very little better than that of 
a merchant's clerk who should increase his salary by helping 
himself from his employer's cash drawer. 

Observe the effect of the back-pay and other swindling 
schemes of its class : 

The total amount of the various appropriation bills passed at 
that scandalous session of Congress exceeds the amount of the 
previous session about fifty-four millions of dollars : The 
details of the various appropriations of 1873 are as follows : 
Preliminary deficiency, $1,699,833 ; Texan border commission, 
$18,490 ; pension, $30,480,000 ; American and British claims 
commission, $613,500 ; Indian, $5,512,218 ; fortification, $1,- 
899,000 ; consular and diplomatic, $1,311,359 ; Military Aca- 
demy, $344,317 ; legislative, executive and judicial, estimated. 



668 JOBBING COEVAL "WITH GOVERNMENT. 

$19,500,000 ; naval, $22,275,757 ; army, $31,796,008 ; Post- 
Office, $3,529,107 ; river and harbor, $6,112,900 ; sundry 
civil, $32,175,415 ; deficiency, $9,242,871— total, $195,310,- 
839. 

Truly the 43d Congress was a shameless body. The corrupt 
members from the extreme Puritan states exceeded in effront- 
ery those from Pennsylvania or Kansas. In the last hours of 
the session after the Credit Mobilier case had been disposed of 
in the House, we had the most extraordinary spectacle of the 
session presented by a colleague of Oakes Ames, of John B. 
Alley, of Samuel E. Hooper, of Mr. Dawes, and of Senator 
Wilson, another Representative from Massachusetts, the Hon. 
Ginery Twichell, openly and actively lobbying on the floor of 
the House for the passage of a bill, introduced by himself, in 
favor of a railroad corporation of which he is president. When 
the point of order had twice been made upon him, that he could 
not vote in favor of a bill in which he was personally interested, 
the Hon. Ginery Twichell left his own desk to take a seat 
beside the tellers, upon the final division of the House on the 
question of the passage of the bill, and personally expostu- 
lated with members who were voting " nay." Evidently the 
example of Oakes Ames and the lessons of investigation 
were utterly thrown away upon the Hon. Ginery Twichell." 

Midst all of this scandal the moral and Christian world was 
doing nothing to show its disgust at what was going on at 
Washington. The great business house of Phelps, Dodge & 
Co. , of New York, whose leading partner was the patron of 
orthodox philanthropy, was at the same time paying $271,000 
to the government to be let out of prosecution for smuggling, and 
the moral newspapers were pompously parading the following 
solemn declaration of Mr. John Alexander, of Philadelphia : 

" By the Grace and Providence of God enabling me, I -will contribute 
to the treasury of the National Association for securing the amendment of 
the Constitution of the United States, the sum of Jive hundred dollars annu- 
ally, until an amendment (in substance such as at present proposed by the As- 
sociation) shall be made to the Constitution of the United States. 



THE GREAT NEEDS OF THE PRESENT. 669 

" If this amendment is nut made during my lifetime, I shall hope to con- 
tinue the aforesaid annual payments through the agency of the legal repre- 
sentatives of my estate. 

" I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." 

After sucli an exhibition of pious stupidity we may answer 
the question which every reader is probably putting in his mind : 
What can we do about it ? 

And this we answer in the words of that admirable review, 
the New York Nation, with whose advice we shall close our 
chapter : 

" We maintain, and with increased confidence," says the 
Nation, " that the shameful corruption in the Government 
which is showing itself side by side with overwhelming Repub- 
lican majorities all over the country, is a fresh proof that the 
Republican party is a common human organization, for the 
ordinary political purposes — namely, the embodiment in legis- 
lation of a small cluster of ideas ; that that purpose was car- 
ried out at the close of the rebellion ; that the party is now 
functus officio, and has for several years been kept in office by 
'the popular dread of " reaction " and the force of the great 
patronage and enormous handling of money resulting from the 
war ; and that in the absence of any great controlling ideas, 
of real work, and of a powerful and respectable opposition, its 
leading men, who, for all practical purposes, are the party and 
represent it, have grown careless, and insolent, and indifferent 
to. public opinion, and finally corrupt. There is nothing eccle- 
siastical about them or it. It has no divine mission, and they 
have no personal consecration. It is simply the consensus of a 
large body of the American people on a few points of home 
policy, and they are a number of not very remarkable gentlemen, 
whom the American people has put in charge of its affairs. 

" The remedy is to be found in the formation of another 
organization for other purposes. What these purposes are we 
have frequently intimated. We may venture to repeat them — 
the reform of the civil service ; the restoration of the judiciary 
to its old position of independence and respectability ; the sini- 



670 JOBBING COEVAL WITH GOVERNMENT. 

plification of political machinery, so that honest and industrious 
citizens can attend to their political affairs without the help of 
professional tricksters ; the release of the States from the con- 
stant interference and supervision of the central authority ; the 
purification of Congress by the reform of the tariff, and the 
prohibition of grants, subsidies, bounties, " protective " duties, 
and the total exclusion of Congressmen from a share in the 
appointing power. These objects can only be obtained by a 
party formed for that purpose, and for nothing else. Whether 
we are near the formation of any £uch party we do not know. 
We acknowledge with sorrow and disappointment that the 
events of last year undoubtedly postponed it, but we would 
fain believe that those who last year honestly strove to bring 
about a better state of things, have not abated one jot of heart 
or hope. We are sure that they must find in what is now pass- 
ing both abundant justification for their course and abundant 
reason for trying again, whenever the opportunity offers. It is 
needless to say, of course, that any such organization would 
contain, if successful, whatever good elements the Republican 
party now contains, and many good elements which that party 
does not contain, and nothing short of this combination of the 
good of all parties will save us. The good Republicans are not 
likely to be removed in chariots of fire when the party organi- 
zation disappears." 



CHAPTEE XXXVII. 



CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE AS A EEPEESENTATIVE STATESMAN. HIS 

LIFE AND DEATH. 

Another niche is filled in the bridge which carried the Re- 
public over the bursting dam of Slavery. Chase, the financier 
of emancipation, has followed his colleagues, the War-Minister 
and the Minister of State. Lincoln's statue, already old enouo-h 
to lose the newness of the bronze, and wear the dark, rich hue 
of imperishable metal, receives with a melancholy smile each 
new arrival. The last of the very greatest has now passed on. 
It is humiliating to know that this is so ; that the generation 
we have entered up is altogether a new one ; and that the War 
itself is not a dead issue to this day. In the North we have 
not recovered from its corruptions, nor in the South from its 
chaos. But time and years will prevail. 

Chief Justice Chase, like Stanton and Seward, lived to feel 
the comparative loss of power, and to see the sceptre grow 
almost barren in his gripe. Possessors at one time of power 
almost unqualified, these men yielded office not wholly by voli- 
tion, and saw with trouble the homage of multitudes grow less 
and less, until they felt themselves almost distributed back 
amongst the mere constituents of later reputations. This is 
the ache of life, — to see the editorial leader on oneself dwindle 
to a paragraph, and the paragraph finally wear a tooth, and at 
last silence, worst of all. Men without career know nothing of 
this. It is the sweetness of private duty to be thus compensa- 

671 



672 CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE. 

ted for never having known the enjoyment of command. I 
think the current estimate of. Mr. Chase to have been the true 
one : that he was ambitious, not satisfied to be an interpreter 
of statutes merely, and not wholly consoled at the head of the 
Bench. But the current estimate which would confound Mr. 
Chase's ambition with the base discontent of a politician, is 
gross as the commentary of pot-houses. He felt his capacity 
and natural superiority to the highest office, to accomplish the 
most harmonious influence. Other men, as well, interpreted 
his admixture of lofty qualities to be destined for no less com- 
mand, and predicted for his Administration, should he even 
reach it, a time of renaissance, mental elevation, and states- 
manship. 

The grades of public life he had ascended with an equal 
step,, and composed front, and stature rising with the prospect. 
He indulged in no tricks of surprise nor sensation. , 

His life contains no catch-phrases. His illustrations were 
seldom apt, to nestle awhile in the ear, and buzz themselves to 
satiety there ; but they took the proportions of mind and rose a 
little short of poesy. The forces which raised him never 
made him their instrument for subsequent ends, and hence 
there is a consistency in his life which will give him no uncer- 
tain portrait. * Like Mr. Sumner and Mr. Trumbull, he pos- 
sessed personal character sufficient to compel unknown coali- 
tions in politics, and the influence with which he led men may 
take the name of Enlightenment. He was a preacher of the 
Gospel of Justice, Mer.cy, and Righteousness, as truly as if his 
uncle, Bishop Chase, had ordained him ; and marble is the 
material of which to make his monument, for there is a trail 
of whiteness left behind him. That he wished to be President, 
was no offense against order, morals, or example. The mother's 
law to her child, the height of human usefulness she points 
out, is the American Chief Magistracy, honorably deserved and 
attained. No less is it the table-land of the man of affairs, 
for none can look toward it from any of the meaner passes and 
depths of career. Chase was suspected of desiring it because 
he was fit for it. His qualifications were his accusation. 



MR. LINCOLN AND MR. CHASE. 673 

He never had accusers, in reality, who were not place-servers, 
and such as would rather live in the ignominious ease of pres- 
ent domination than be detached, vigilant and influential "citi- 
zens. Within the Republican party, in Mr. Lincoln's first term, 
there were few men of the first rank who gave a tame acqui- 
escence to the necessity of his renomination. He my Winter 
Davis, Oliver P. Morton, even Ben.- Wade, were accused of be- 
ing restive, and believing that affairs hung too loosely. It was 
no better in the Cabinets of Washington, Adams, Madison, 
Monroe, or Tyler. Mr. Charles Francis Adams, in his late 
eulogy on Seward, made the point that his distinctive sacrifice 
■in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet was in voluntary karikari, abandoning 
competition for the succession to which, says Mr. Adams, 
he had all the rights of qualification. But Mr. Seward aban- 
doned the Presidency because he knew that he had no more 
prospects, and he was at the head of the Cabinet already. Mr. 
Chase had not yet made the essay. And ii Mr. Lincoln made 
Mr. Chase Chief Justice, as some declare, " to shelve him" for 
the Presidency, he acknowledged his formidable quality, and 
was himself a politician in this act of strategy. If he ap- 
pointed Mr. Chase Chief Justice in acknowledgment of his 
desert, the fame of the latter is no less secure. To have re- 
ceived the highest office in Mr. Lincoln's gift, and with it the 
public impression that he might else have taken the Presidency, 
exhausts the scale of .appreciation. The Presidency itself, 
under the conditions of the nominating convention, would be 
no such test of fitness. 

The manner, the time, and public talk about Gov. Chase's 
nomination to the Supreme Bench satisfied neither himself nor 
the period that he had ended his active career there. Public 
conviction in this country will not accept anything short of the 
grave as the final retirement of necessary men. There is a 
selfish class in our society which is too indifferent to vote 
and too rich to take office ; but the Presidency is not to be dis- 
honored even by a Chief Justice, if election and duty point 
that way. For that pinnacle, on the level with the seats of 
43 



674 CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE. 

Kings, the General tears off his triple stars and the priest his 
vesture. John Marshall, and John Jay, and Roger Taney kept 
out of politics because politics, after they became Chief Justices, 
let them alone. Marshall and* Taney never ceased to dwell on 
the line of public affairs, and from the Bench contemplated the 
coordinate' parts of the Government with the interest of old 
times. Justice Davis, the trusted friend of Mr. Lincoln, also 
heard the Macedonian cry 6f " Come down and help us !" and, 
like the youthful Samuel, he answered : " Lord, here am I !" 
The fact is, that, if Justices are to be kept vestal from politics, 
they must be vestal when set upon the Bench. To make a 
man Chief Justice from a political motive is to do the man an 
injury, and make the Bench a mere switch or sideling for 
another candidate to be run by. 

The association of the Chief Justice with parties after 1866 
grew out of the needs of the times. It was a period when a 
Chief Justice might wish, for his country's sake, to resume ac- 
tive Magistracy, and recover the Republic from the chaos of 
opinion, and the, mutual selfishness of sections and parties. His 
office was itself a qualification for this task. The Impeach- 
ment trial of an opinionated President by a Senate already in 
the secondary stage of that corruption which was soon to break 
out in public view, brought Justice Chase down from the Bench 
to preside over the pageant. The spectacle was prolonged, and 
the moral lesson of it discouraging. The man who was to suc- 
ceed to the Presidency, if Mr. Johnson should be convicted, 
voted every time as a Senator for the accomplishment of both 
ends, and he proved to be the same who, in 1860, led a little 
bilious faction to Chicago to put the Ohio delegation against 
Mr. Chase. Mr. Wade and his outsiders spent all the time 
they had to dispose of when not distributing the patronage 
they expected to get, in denouncing the Chief Justice in such 
papers as Forney's Chronicle, Fulton's Custom House American, 
'Young's Tribune, et al. The failure of that trial they imputed 
to the Chief Justice. And, ever since, they have kept up a 
little chirping and wagging of heads, which will now probably 
break out in their obituary fulminations. 



CHASE, AS A MAN AND A FINANCIER. 675 

But, if the country had taken the man on the Bench in 1868, 
instead of the man at the head of the army, the sins of carpet- 
bagging and ku-klux never would have been enacted. The 
Executive countenance would have been turned from adven- 
turers and men of low degree, and the public patronage would 
have been given to persons who could have re-nationalized 
sentiment in the South, and spiritualized it in the North. Those 
habits of attention, devotion, surveillance, and organization, 
by which he made the barren Treasury grow faster than war 
could exhaust it, and left his two terms of administration in 
Ohio in most admirable recollection by men of every party, 
were needed at the close of Johnson's Administration, and he 
believed that he could accomplish the task. Amidst all the 
innuendo and fusilade poured upon him by editorial brokers, 
not one authority ever expressed the opinion that he would not 
make a capable President. He was never called to an account 
on the score of his qualifications or his purity. Secretary of 
the Treasury, he neyer took a gift. No kin of' his took an 
office. The reason was, tjjat he had breeding and the breath 
of honor. 

He was a man of finer nature than has been seen in Wash- 
ington politics in the present period. His nature was wholly 
Republican, but it was the Republicanism of good manners, 
which raised the surrounding level without depressing the 
spirits of any. To be his guest was to feel a higher respect for 
oneself. He did not labor upon his private auditors, and was 
not brilliant in speech or reminiscence ; but he had a faculty 
of humor, quiet and twinkling, and a breadth of nature which 
began impressively and grew by acquaintance. The great art 
of encouragement, by which, as generous men grow older, they 
stand like cathedrals, all buttressed round with younger men, 
Mr. Chase possessed almost to a fault. He was of use to others 
more than they could return it. The great fortunes made by 
the patronage of the Treasury stood aloof, fearful of being 
asked to labor amongst his friends ; and there was a time when 
some who had derived income and opportunity from his judi- 



676 CHIEF 'JUSTICE - CHASE. 

cial fondness hastened to declare for the regular ticket in ad- 
vance, lest their obligation might be to their prejudice. These 
Gov. Chase let pass like Aristides when he wrote his own sen- 
tence of banishment upon the voter's shell. But familiarity 
he knew how to arrest, and he could rebuke with a look that 
was Washingtonian. 

In his moral relations to politics, society, and the Bar, he 
was orthodox, submissive, and reciprocal. His origin was 
good, but dependent ; yet he never ate the bread of dependence, 
but, with New Hampshire frugality, made his way quietly from 
college to school-teaching, and, in the vestibule of the Jaw, 
waiting for clients, he became an author in the law. When his 
profession developed and made him a citizen held in neighbor- 
ly esteem, he planted himself upon the highest ground of hu- 
man usefulness, and became an interpreter of the law in the 
interests of humanity. He did not drift with the tide to easy 
honors, but led the choice -spirits and the awakening conscience 
of the country, irrespective of party lines. He never aspired 
to be the creature of any party, #nd made no profession of 
party loyalty at any time. That organization which would 
yield the most to Freedom and Progress suited him well, and 
at least four parties have paid his talents and ideas the meed 
of support. On whom were so many diplomas ever bestowed 
by public parties ? He was not only in the right with two or 
three, but in the might with two or three. The Presidency 
might have been his, at the hands of the Democracy, in 1852. 
Had he held the banks to personal allegiance, he never would 
have made his legal-tender decision. 

s-~ The residence of the Chief Justice has latterly been an old 
t country-seat on the hills at the head of Tiber Creek, about 3 
miles north of the City of Washington, — a roomy, oblong, 
plain brick' dwelling, painted pea-green, and surrounded by 
steep heights and woodlands. I drove out there a week ago, 
and found a quietness prevailing which would be melancholy 
to young people in this backward spring. Near at hand, a 
gipsy camp was pitched in the woods, and the usual accompa- 



HIS FAMILY. 677 

niments of wild dogs, horses, and children surrounded it. A 
short distance from the house, a cluster of modern cemeteries 
were assembled on the road, in one of which was the tomb of 
the late Amos Kendall. Here Chief Justice Chase has passed a<^ 
year or less of recuperation, work, companionship, and doubt- 
less apprehension of the short remainder of days. There is a 
turn in the strength of men of affairs which takes them un- 
awares and hastens decay. He was warned about three years 
ago that his time was short, and, since that slight stroke of 
paralysis, his hair has fallen out, his face grown long and thin- 
ner, and his eyes have grown dimmer and of diffused light. 
A sturdy man he used to be, with a solid, farmer-like carriage; 
and the portraits on the greenbacks of his splendid head, large, 
collected expression, and folded arms, all massive and impos- 
ing, little resembled the oldest figure of late on the Bench, 
wearing out the hours of duty there, listening to close argu- 
ments, and going home to labor on tasks which must meet the 
criticism of the country. 

His worldly fortunes have been goodly, but not great. His 
daughters were happily married, and have not needed his 
bounty, and they have given him the wealth of their pride and 
affection. Perhaps the prize of higher honors was not less 
desirable ,for their sakes. Both of these ladies inherit their 
father's mental disposition. Mrs. Sprague has probably been 
the most perfect social product of the period of the Republican 
party in Washington, — naive, elegant, engaging, and spirited ; 
and Mrs. Hoyt, with less scope of influence, has been no less 
deai* to her father, and of more definite accomplishments. 
Several grandchildren will preserve the blood of the Chief 
Justice ; his memory amongst jurists will be equal to that of 
any man on the Supreme Bench. Courage, reconsideration, 
compass, original views, clearness, and grace of authorship, 
and labor in the law in all its departments, as critic, compiler, 
law-giver, and expounder : these will enroll him high in his 
profession, so that no antiquary need be called to discover him. 
As Theodore Parker said, twenty years ago : " In the greatest 



678 CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE. 

question of the age, the question of Human Rights, as cham- 
pions of mankind there will appear Adams, Giddings, Chase, 
Palfrey, Mann, Hale, Seward, Rantoul, and Sumner." To this 
it may be added that, when the question of Human Rights was 
done, Mr. Chase was one of the first and few who believed that 
rehabilitation and magnanimity were better than the mere 
stiffening up of parties on old issues and antagonisms, — better 
than the cowardly riot of plunder which we have permitted in 
the South, and are in the reflex billows of in the Northern 
States. 



CHAPTER* XXXVIII. 



THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY AT THE CAPITAL. 

The first inauguration of General Grant was hailed with the 
plaudits of a large majority of intelligent Americans. He had 
been the victor in the great conflict, and had he possessed the 
greatness which comes of reflection, he would have set a lesson 
to future politicians, and made his first term wholly harmo- 
nious, and his life a fresh spot in the reminiscences of pos- 
terity by declining a second inauguration. We shall, there- 
fore, select his first appearance on the Presidential platform 
for an etching. 

The President-elect rode to the Capitol in 1869, with Gen- 
eral Rawlins, his Galena townsman. Two good nags drew 
his carriage. A long procession went before and behind. He 
subscribed to the civil forms of the occasion, bowing to the 
popular salutations, and his dress was plain black, without a 
tithe of the soldier in it. There was much music, ringing of 
bells, banners and huzzas ; but the intensest study was the shy 
little man in the carriage, without a flush on his face, but with 
deep reflective mark^ there, made by poverty and war. "When 
he arrived at the Capitol he found the top, the stairs, the pro- 
jections, the balustrades, the abutments of that large marble 
edifice as full of people as a candy capitol might be of flies- 
The area before the Capitol was clear, save of a few ; but in the 
park beyond, the trees were full of clinging human fruit, and 
between the huge sitting statue of Washington and the eye, a 

679 



680 THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY AT THE CAPITAL. 

silent, orderly multitude looked up to where the long triple 
facade of the Capitol projected its three great porticoes. 
The middle portico was the focus of all rays of light, of music, 
of attention. Two long flags drooped down the central Corin- 
thian columns, and between them burst the peal of invisible 
drums, beaten in the Rotunda. From the bases of these col- 
umns fell a flight of stairs to \ temporary platform, railed and 
draped in colors. This was all, except the stately building 
reaching to the clouds, and the peering tip-toe multitude on 
fences, trees, caiTiages, and house-tops, while amongst the mass 
on frail scaffolding of timber, photography, like a carrier 
pigeon, perched, to seize the spectacle and fly down the gene- 
rations with it. 

Grant alighted in the presence of all these, and with Senator 
Cragin of New Hampshire, a gentleman of large, baldish, 
florid, forehead, he walked out of the view of the people, 
they huzzaing. The Senate was a packed mass of ladies in the 
galleries, and on the floor, folks of distinction — gold-fringed, 
sworded, cocked-hatted members of the foreign legations. 
Colfax made a little speech, and "Wade went out of what is 
called public life. Grant entered the Senate with his usual shy 
unconsciousness, bowed to the Chair, and sat a while, suffering 
examination. When the time came for him to go before the 
people, he was prompt and sedate. The procession moved de- 
liberately through the long lobby and aisle of the Rotunda, 
where the band of music made the iron ribs tingle, and filing 
to the left, the President-elect walked into the daylight, de- 
scended the flight of stairs, and stood before the roaring, surg- 
ing people. There were the Judges, in their long, Clack, silk 
robes, to administer the oath of office ; tltere was his wife — 
happiest joy of all — her love and confidence crowned in this, 
poverty appeased and obscurity vindicated ; there she stood 
among her relatives, by her father and her sisters' husbands, 
with her pride too big not to beam, except for tears — there was 
everybody of honorable descent, talent or station, and the air 
was full of glad salutations, the people saying, for the* moment, 
unselfishly, " Hail ! our accepted one !" 



GEN. grant's inauguration. 681 

Grant, small and solid and shy, with that weary look that 
Lincoln wore, furrows on his face, tenacious resignation the 
epitome of it, looked out like one surrendered. A man beside 
me said : 

" He is a little, bashful fellow, but with terrible talents ! " 

The music throbs its last ; the huzzas cease ; the General 
takes the oath of office to Chief Justice Chase with his arm and 
spread hand uplifted. He looks up to the large presence of the 
Chief Justice, burnt by the fire of battle — the Judge possessed 
by gentler inspirations. All grave and grand allegory is 
depicted in their two figures — the burning torch of the Wilder- 
ness is inverted, and the slayer, without a sword, takes the oath 
of peace. Together the} r stand, who have come to these two 
Magistracies by different roads — the younger man by the harder 
and the wearier route, overtaking all the dignities of the other, 
and now that the conflict of their ambition is over, how like 
they are in wishes and wisdoms ! The one by the study of 
books, and the other by the study of active life, stand now 
upon the same results, both progressive, both conservative, and 
probably mutual admirers. 

General Grant draws forth his speech carefully and folds it 
back, wetting his finger at his lip. Then he reads in a quiet 
way, audible near by, no further ; and, while he does so, his 
daughter is passed to his side, and she puts her hand upon his 
arm as if to support him. So he stands, strengthened by child- 
hood, looking into the multitude and pronouncing his designs, 
like the captain of a ship plunging out of battle, into storm. 

Having sketched the head of the government, let us take a 
turn in a discursive way around the social life of the Capital. 

The tendency of things in politics is toward organization, 
and the demands of party politics upon a share of the evenings 
of its victims, have led to the arrangement of all the clerks, 
dating from particular States, into pseudo sociable bodies. The 
Illinois Association gave its ball and supper* at the Masonic 
Hall, a new edifice, which has already been honored by the 
English Minister's entertainment given to Prince Arthur. I 



682 THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY AT .THE CAPITAL. 

went to tliis place about 9 o'clock one Friday evening, and 
found quite an elaborate character of hospitality. At the top 
of the stairs stood two or three courtly and ceremonious gen- 
tlemen, in swallow-tail coats and white kids and neckties, who 
politely suggested that all overcoats and hats must be deposited 
in the coat-room. When the ball-room door was opened, I 
beheld about six hundred persons, the ladies preponderating in 
numbers, vigorously dancings while a band of music perched 
in a little gallery over the portal, dispensed agreeable music. 
At the head of the room sat President Grant, with that look 
of desperate resolution which has never left his countenance 
since he sent the celebrated telegraphic despatch, swearing 
that he would fight it out on that line ; on one side of him sat 
the Hon. S. S. Marshall, Democratic member of Congress, who 
appeared to consider that anything affecting Illinois, whether 
Democratic or Republican, was entitled to his encouragement ; 
on the other side of the President sat the Hon. Norman B. 
Judd. 

From my elevated position, I had a good view of the entire 
roomful, and it seemed to me that a more robust,. cheerful, and 
republican group of men and women had not been assembled 
in Washington since the organization of the government. 
Children were dancing amongst the men ; many heads of 
bureaus, and even the partkul ir clerks of the State Depart- 
ment mingled in the throng, and, after a while, when quiet 
had been secured, Colonel Joe Holt led the President down 
from his perch, and introduced him to Mr. Thomas B. Bryan, 
who made a pretty little speech, to which Mr. Judd gave a muscu- 
lar response on behalf of the Chief Magistrate. Everybody 
here agrees that the Illinois Sociable was the best that has 
ever been given by a single State. Senator Trumbull and his 
nephew, with a number of his colleagues, were upon the floor,- 
and they all had a right hearty time. The same night the 
Ohioans gave a sociable at a neighboring hall, and the Pres- 
ident, unattended, went down there and looked his customary 
resolution. 



MEN RUINED BY THE TEMPTATIONS. 683 

The abuse of promiscuous receptions, promiscuous dinners, 
and promiscuous balls, has been more than ever a subject of 
reprehension during the present discouraging session of Con- 
gress. Much was said, after last New Year's, about the 
thoughtfulness of the ladies here who, on that day, removed 
intoxicating drinks from their tables ; but the nightly recep- 
tions in the city are seldom given without bowls of strong- 
punch, and frequently baskets of champagne are sacrificed to 
the guests ; while young women, single and married, make a 
class of acquaintances not tolerable under their own roof, — 
many of whom come with the alluring appellations of Gov- 
ernor, General, Judge, or Senator. The dressing has become 
alarmingly immodest. The lobby is made equal to the best of 
our dignities, and men who ply the trade of public plunderer, 
present their daughters and wives to the very officials whom, 
otherwise, they would be unable to reach. There was one gen- 
tleman implicated in the late Credit Mobilier exposures, whose 
temptation came directly through the abuse of promiscuous din- 
ners. When he came to Washington City, in the first place, he 
lived remote from the fashionable quarter, and was indus- 
rtious, domestic, and perfectly unchallenged by any slanderer. 
Next came his removal to a finer social quarter, and, having 
an important committee, he was in request for dinners at 
Welcker's, where the palate is tempted with the choicest wines, 
coming successively to wash down sweet-breads, unseasonable 
game, rich capons with sauce Cfoddard, and terrapin stewed 
• in Madeira wine. The best of these lobby caterers was well- 
known by everybody in the city to be an old man of doubtful 
associations, who lived mysteriously on the verge of the Govern- 
ment, and possessed no fortune or income of his own. Although a 
lobbyist, few knew in what he lobbied. He had traveled in all 
countries, had great accomplishments, was a delightful conver- 
sationalist, and of no reputability. Socially ostracised, he was 
able to bring to his dinners the most honored men in Congress ; 
the sedate Mr. Boutwell had done him the honor of feeding at 
his table. 



684 THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY AT THE CAPITAL. 

Our Congressional friend could not bur experience a moral 
and mental deterioration in the midst of such viands, and such 
general surrender of the discretions of decent life. He was 
much beloved, and he still keeps the hearts of many who sor-. 
row with him, and, if there is any stigma upon a name never, 
before these late exposures, disgracefully associated, the descent 
began with the late dinners at the great restaurant. 

We have had this year, for the first time, a swell party given 
at a pubEc hall, instead of a private house, because it was to 
be such a stunning affair that no house could hold the guests, and 
the same edifice was leased in which the British Minister used 
to give a banquet to the Prince of Wales. Probably five hun- 
dred persons went to this public hall, and the dressing was the 
most gorgeous and extravagant ever seen in this city, and prob- 
ably New York, at the Purim or the Charity ball, never devel- 
oped finer silks, laces and jewels. A magnificent supper was 
spread ; the music was the best that could be afforded ; so much 
nakedness was probably never revealed in Washington* ; and all 
this was to introduce a fair young girl into society. The party 
in question was given on the proceeds of the* sale of a cele- 
brated silver mine to certain Englishmen, — the sale encouraged 
by the American Minister to England. No comment is needed 
•upon this matter ; but, simple-minded and thoughtful y . pie 
must see a certain connection between extravagance like this 
and the corruption which is seriously threatening the stability 
oi our institutions. 

The corrector of our society should be the religion of our 
women, but it appears that there is no longer that sensitive- 
ness to dishonor, and quick sense of repulsion for the public 
plunderers, which our mothers had. One of the most popular 
men in Washington society this winter has been a young poli- 
tician enriched by shame and dishonesty ; a man born a scoun- 
drel. When you become conversant with our political society, 
you will find, with all its charmingness and brightness, that 
there arc no convictions beneath it. The fine women will for- 
get what you are saying when you suggest the character of this 



DR. pinckney's turkey. 685 

or that person, if, indeed, she be not allured by his unscrupu- 
lousness and success. This politician, you will find, shares his 
wife's regret that his fairest daughter did not marry an enriched 
political villain, instead of the simple, modest, and struggling 
gentleman she chose. Yonder Minister, you will hear, took 
one of the largest fees ever tendered to protect a man's inter- 
est, and, failing to discharge the obligation because of his 
political promotion, kept the money and gave no equivalent. 
Yonder Head of Bureau, you will be told, has patented a 
method of compelling all the college-land scrip in the country 
to be sold to an outside confederate below its value, the scrip 
being withheld until the confederate's bid be accepted. And, 
in the multiplicity of such recitals, the indignation of the hearer 
loses direction, and becomes dazed and confused, as Mr. Haw- 
ley well expressed it. 

Let us turn into a sunnier alley and take our food with bet- 
ter people. Par exemple : One of the most agreeable enter- 
tainments of an epicurean kind which is given at Washington 
is that of Dr. Ninian Pinckney, who stands second on the list 
of Medical Directors, and is the nephew of William Pinckney 
and brother of Bishop Pinckney. Dr. Pinckney's quar- 
ters are at the Washington Navy Yard, and he is celebrated 
for feeding turkeys on English walnuts — administered whole, 
shell and all, without cracking. I once had the pleasure of 
attending a dinner given by this hospitable epicurus to Pay- 
Director Cunningham. A turkey reposed in the centre of the 
table of remarkable size, and of a flavor not equaled by the 
most delicate capon. Before we put the knife int5 this dish for 
Dives, another turkey was brought up to the door, and the pro- 
cess of feeding him was achieved. Fourteen full, large wal- 
nuts, whole, were put in the wondering fowl's bill, and slipped 
down the gullet by the fingers, outside. As the first walnut 
went down, the turkey looked up with one eye, in a baffled sort 
of way, as if wondering whether he was assisting at a comedy 
or going to execution. At the third walnut, he turned up 
both his eyes as if now assured that it was not the intention 
to kill him by starvation. At the fifth walnut his inquisitiveness 



686 THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY AT THE CAPITAL. 

was unbounded, and he wore the look of a man who had been 
reading a thrilling story in the Ledger, and had suddenly 
bumped up upon the words, " To be continued in our next." 
Continued it was ; and after the seventh walnut, Sir Turkey 
gave up the conundrum, closed his eyes resignedly ; and, when 
the fourteenth walnut had slipped down his gullet, and they 
were all rattled by the hand, so as to produce from the bird's 
interior, a sound as of a macadamizing job going on there, his 
expression was plainly to be read : " Gentlemen, you know what 
this is for, and I presume your consideration for myself will 
enable me to reflect upon the performance with the eye of 
faith." 

It takes about three weeks to fatten a turkey in this way, 
for the animal, unlike the mills of the gods, grinds exceeding 
small, but very fast. He undergoes considerable digestive wake- 
fulness, but the secretions come to his rescue ; the shells are 
melted down, and the walnuts are assimilated, so that he ma- 
tures in a fractional part of the life he had been destined to. 
It seems that this trick had been discovered on the way around 
Cape Horn, on a certain naval vessel which contained a great 
many turkeys, and nothing for them to eat. A humorous 
officer said that sooner than see his turkeys starve, he would 
feed them on the table-dessert. A few of the animals died, but 
the majority survived, and proved to be palatable beyond 
all previous experience. I mention this matter for the edifi- 
cation of your gourmands in the West,, who want to know 
what a turkey is capable of. Senator Anthony was de- 
lighted both 'with the docility and delicacy of the respective 
birds of freedom which had been brought before us. The ex- 
periments made with turkeys are said to demonstrate the fact 
that fourteen walnuts is the limit which a bird can stand, and 
that less than eight will not produce the flavor attainable. Dr. 
Pinckney's daughter is a very admirable po3tess, and perpet- 
uates in the family the literary talent of William Pinckney — 
a man who perhaps resembled Salmon P. Chase in elevation of 
character as much as any of Mr. Chase's predecessors. 

A good dinner is as effective in national as in family, mat- 



JOBBERY OF THE DOME. 687 

ters. I remember one day meeting the contractor in iron for 
moulding the plates of the beautiful dome at Washington, and 
he described to me how the dome got to be placed on the top 
of the Capitol. Pains were taken to have champagne lunches 
placed in some of the committee-rooms, and on the last night 
of the session, when there had been a general treat and mag- 
nanimity and humor were abounding, Mr. Walter, architect, 
had a superb drawing of a new dome introduced, colored and 
mounted most beautifully. Everybody was delighted : 

" ' Come, now ! Give us a hundred thousand dollars for a 
new dome!'" 

" They voted it in both houses in twenty minutes' time. 
With the hundred thousand dollars the old dome was removed." 
Then, after the recess, the architect came up and said, blandly : 

' I want an appropriation for the dome ! There's nothing 
on the building.' 

' How ? We gave you a hundred thousand.' 

' That was to take off the old dome.' 

' What is the new dome to cost V 

1 About a million of dollars !' 

They found they had an apt pupil, and crying : 

' Sold again !' these politicians gave the appropriation. 

" Why, sir," continued the dome-builder, " the Government; 
Architect has, for the honor of the public buildings and his 
office, to get Congress to consent to his plans by just such po- 
litical dodges. Fair talk will not pursuade the average taste, 
hereabout. Few of them, now, have the eye to see that yonder 
dome, instead of being in the centre of the pile, stands on the 
east front of it. Yet say to them that the east front should be 
moved forward, and two-thirds of them will cry that it is more 
beautiful as at present." 

I asked if any casualties had happened while they were 
working on the dome, so high in the air. 

" Nobody killed on the dome ?" said the former foreman of 
the painters to me. " I guess not ! only three ! three was all." 

" Fust, there was Bob Sleight. He was carrying a ladder 



688 THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON. 

across the derrick, that stood up yonder, most high as you 
see. Nobody see him fall, and he never spoke afterwards. 
But we ■ know he fell clear to the temporary dome — sixty foot 
— and was mashed to a loblolly. He was getting six dollars a 
day. His madame was put in the Treasury by the help of the 
architect." 

" Next was Edgar Richardson. He was a painter, if I 
don't forget. He fell in the running knot of a rope that got 
tangled round him and drawed tight at both ends. It broke 
four of his ribs, and he lived a mighty little while. Mr. 
Walter, the architect, went to his funeral. Did we all like 
Mr. Walter? I guess not! He'd go to anybody's funeral that 
worked on the Capitol, and died a workin.' I guess we didn't 
like Mr. Walter. Oh, no !" * 

" Last and worst was Christy Connor. He was a worker 
in iron. He worked up yonder under the drum, setting the 
caps on them pilasters. He had a little scaffold swung, and 
cross-pieces, passing from the scaffold to the wall. He 
stepped back on the end of a board^ and it uptilted. It 
pitched Christy Connor, headforemost, about twenty feet, and 
he struck the side of his skull agin the iron edge of the peristyle, 
making a crack wide as your finger, and a tablespoonfull of 
his Drains came out. We picked up Christy Connor and 
laid him on a settee and walked him to the hospital. Mr. 
Fowler was beside him. Says Christy Connor : 

' Mr. Fowler, am I hurt much ?' His eyes and mind were 
as clear as a bell. The doctor at the hospital lifted up the 
scalp, and Christy began to bleed. The doctor says : 

' He's cut the main artery of the brain. If I leave this up 
he'll die in five minutes. If I shut it down he.'ll live 
two weeks, and then die from inflammation.' So he shut 
it down, and Christy lived ten days, sensible to the last. They 
got his wife work, and Mr. Walter went to Ms funeral. That's 
all the people killed on the dome. There was a heap of falls, 
but no other mashes." 

We may think of these things when we look up at the beau- 
tiful dome. 



PINE RESIDENCES AND FINE PEOPLE. 689 

Society in many of its features is perfectly equal at Wash- 
ington to the demands of the age upon our government. New 
Year's day is the best time for the average citizen to look at 
the inside of the salons. I remember going the rounds in 1869, 
and making the following note upon Mrs. Fish : 

In one of the finest residences in Washington, formerly the 
home of Ex-Senator Morgan, the wife of the Secretary of State 
received visitors all day, and it is no disparagement to ladies 
of less experience and opportunities to say that she seemed by 
general consent to be considered the noblest hostess of them all. 

A fine blonde, with the " repose" of Vere de Vere, some- 
what fleshy, kindly without condescension, and matronly and 
magisterial together, she stood at the head of the most sump- 
.tuous apartment in Washington — a long, lofty, wide apart- 
ment, with a conversational salon half-curtained off in soft 
distance, and the eye was carried along by references of rich 
objects mildly harmonizing, so that in the effort of the inter- 
view nothing was remembered at leaving except the atmos- 
phere, the languor, and the vista. Mrs. Fish was attired as 
became this scene, her years and her complexion, — in a rich 
black silk, heavily trimmed with lace, high cut, and touched 
with pearls at the throat, ears, and wrists. I was interested in 
seeing how, without effort, she disposed of the long silken 
train of her dress, which was always formidable and yet never 
got in the way ; it followed her will as perfectly as the servant 
in monogram buttons, and the dress of a novitiate flunkey, who 
soifhded the names and titles at the drawing-room door. By 
Mrs. Fish was her married daughter, with a blue silk, and lace 
overskirt, very rich and quiet. There, from morn till dusk, 
these two devoted ladies, in the serene possession of that con- 
fidence which comes partly from long-acquired wealth, partly 
from good parentage and education, and the rest from good 
conscience, high character, and nature, stood quietly and ele- 
gantly disposing of many hundred gentlemen, never disturbed, 
never brusque, never familiar — the family of the Secretary of 
the State, as we felt. 
44 



690 THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY AT THE CAPITAL. 

Early in General Grant's administration, two popular and 
beautiful ladies died within a few days of each other. One of 
these was the bride of General Belknap, Secretary of War. 

The funeral of Mrs. Belknap was an unostentatious citizen 
affair, held at St. John's Church, a little old quaint Episcopal 
edifice, situated but a few doors from General Belknap's "Wash- 
ington residence. It was the church which he had attended 
when a boy, living at his father's house at Georgetown. There 
were a few carriages, four of the Cabinet officers riding together 
ahead of the hearse, and the following carriage was taken up by 
the bereaved Secretary, his son, and his widowed sister-in-law. 
The President came up late and alone in his phaeton. General 
Belknap was deeply affected, and his large frame shook with 
emotion. The coffin was received at the church door by the 
rector and his assistant, in their ministerial roheS, and some 
boy choristers made shrill music during the service. The cer- 
emonies took place within a few yards of Corcoran' s house, 
where the young bride, the daughter of Congressman Beck, of 
Kentucky, had been laid out in her bridal robes only a few 
days before. Mrs. Corcoran and Mrs. Belknap had been friends, 
and both were beautiful women, one a fine blonde and the other 
a tall, sparkling brunette. They were laid side by side in the 
vault of the chapel at Georgetown Cemetery, one leaving be- 
hind her a youthful husband, and the other a babe only a few 
days old. It is said that among the last words of Mrs. Cor- 
coran were these : 

" Mamma, I know that I am dying. Oh ! won'1 you %ee 
my husband, and not let him forget me ? " 

General Belknap wrote to a friend, the day before his wife's 
decease, expressing, in the following words, the gravity of his 
loss : 

" My wife still remains very ill. She is somewhat more 
easy, but we have ho hope that she will ever again be out. 
Calm, patient, and resigned, she is ready for the end when it 
comes, but is hopeful that the goodness of Heaven may yet 
spare her life. No man knows how much I lose when she is 



1BE RICHEST MAN IN WASHINGTON CITY. 691 

taken from me, for she has not only been faithful and devoted, 
hut she has been my trusty friend, and most wise counsellor. 
This cloud of grief that hangs over my home, makes this hol- 
iday season a saddened one for us." 

These instances of domestic affection, preserved and strength- 
ened amidst the toils of politics, makes us feel that, after all, 
the heart still keeps a large place in official life at Washington. 

Reference to Mr. Corcoran above recalls his uncle, W. TV. 
Corcoran, Esq., now quite advanced in years, the richest man 
in Washington City, and the inhabitant of the most extensive 
and complete mansion. It stands opposite Decatur's old man- 
sion, and is by many thought to be the proper site for a new 
Executive Mansion. Mr. Corcoran is a descendant of an Irish- 
man who lived at Georgetown before the Capital City was 
established. He is said to have made his first success as a 
banker in advances to Government employe's. Mr. Riggs, a 
rich Marylander, being desirous of finding a suitable business- 
partner for his son, chose Corcoran. Their banking-house was 
for some time in the Paymaster's building, on Fifteenth street, 
opposite the Treasury ; but they took the United States Bank 
building at a later date, where Mr. Riggs still conducts the bus- 
iness, Mr. Corcoran having a room there. Corcoran was always 
a man of large ideas and worldly observation. At the present 
time, when his sands of life seem to be running out, he is in 
appearance a large, portly, refined-looking person, with square 
head and shoulders, very white hair, and of neat and respect- 
able dress. He made a large portion of his fortune — which is 
by some estimated at $6,000,000, and by some at $12,000,000 
— by taking the National loans, particularly during the Mexi- 
can War. He shared the conservative prejudices of the old 
class of Washingtonians, but had the good sense to keep out 
of the Rebellion, and not to antagonize the Government. At 
a relatively early period, he bought a large amount of property 
surrounding his mansion, and also several of the noblest farm- 
lands and hill-sites around the city. He has given to Wash- 
ington about $2,000,000 of benefactions in art and philan- 
thropy. 



692 THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY AT THE CAPITAL. 

A celebrated lady in Washington life up to the period of the 
war was Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas. 

The house that Mr. Douglas presented to his wife before her 
marriage, stood upon a high hill, close by General Grant's sub- 
sequent and present residence, and in the grading of the streets 
thereabout, this house, with its extensive walled garden and 
lawn, was left suspended in the air, so that it is now one of the 
most imposing dwellings in the city, and is named appropriately, 
Douglas Place. Major Williams, since his marriage to the 
widow Douglas, has nearly doubled the size of this house, raised 
a French roof upon it, and capped its flight of stone stairs 
with a pair of colossal carved lions. The terraces around the 
house are planted with shrubs and box-bush, and immemorial 
trees contribute to give the place the air of venerable patrimony. 
Within the mansion two fine children count the march of time, 
neither of them heirs of Mr. Douglas, whose little contribution 
shares his sleep. The exquisite peacefulness and privacy of 
Mrs. Williams' life show the difference between what are called 
Les Marriages di Soclete, and what we name, familiarly, love- 
matches. In the time of her first husband no party was com- 
plete without her. Her picture was purchasable at every print- 
shop, and we beheld her in Washington every day. Now, 
wedded to a private gentleman and soldier, of years not uncon- 
genial to her own, she is the ornament of a beautiful home, and 
her children are her kingdom. She is still pious at church, 
and fond of riding out, but her journeys are commonly made 
out of town and not within it. I felt in her proximity to the 
home of Mrs. Grant how mutable and yet how merciful are the 
dispensations of Providence. Eight years ago Mrs. Douglas 
might have been the mistress of the White House. Now she 
is a good man's happy wife. 

Having spoken of Mrs. Belknap and a New Year turn in 
Washington, I may recall a visit which I paid to her husband, 
the Secretary of War, just after his appointment. General 
Belknap had handsome and roomy quarters in the Seward 
mansion, which Payne invaded with his base knife, and where 



A NEW YEAR'S CALL AT SECRETARY BELKNAP'S. 693 

Key drew the last of his wretched breaths. It is a square set 
house of painted brick, with a broad sidewalk before it, shaded 
with old trees, — an old house and a large house, yet containing 
few rooms, and in the middle, low down toward the sidewalk, 
is one door. By one side of the house an alley runs back to 
stables ; the exterior appearance of the place, though in the 
heart of the fashionable city, is of a stern and rather funereal 
sort, bearing marks of that sort of aristocratic Washington 
past which nature has conspired against, and in due time, or 
sooner, such houses grow old. The windows are few, and yet 
. not very large ; the rooms are immense ; the walls are thick ; 
and yet the wind sometimes makes the old brick warehouse 
tremble. Before it all is a public square, little invaded except 
by child's nurses, and the block itself has only four or five 
houses along all its length ; big, slavery-looking houses, wrapt 
in sell-importance, and covered with due-bills of moss, on 
which Nemesis demands payment, as she knocks at the door 
on every stormy night. 

Into this old, aristocratic house we went to pay our New 
Year's call. A servant opened our carriage door, and entering 
the hall we climbed a side stairs, and placing our cards upon a 
silver plate, advanced in our overcoats to speak to the Secre- 
tary. He stood near the door, clad in black, a fine young 
presence, with rich Flammand color in his beard, and hair, and 
cheeks ; a clear blue eye, with strength of tide and currents in 
it, and equal to storms, perhaps ; and that large, administra- 
tive urbanity which is partly of the West, but chiefly of the 
American. 

The Secretary of War is the son of an old army Colonel, to 
whose regiment, in early days, Grant was attached as a subor- 
dinate officer. He has won praise here amongst all classes by 
the unostentatious steadiness of his administrative life, and 
his fellow-citizens of Iowa are pleased with his hearty and sin- 
cere remembrance of them. Mrs. Belknap is a young and 
amiable lady, of a sweet expression, a tall and somewhat slen- 
der figure, and dark eyes. She was dressed with elegance and 



694 THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY AT THE CAPITOL. 

taste, and at her side were the daughters of Justice Swayne, 
of the United States Supreme Bench. 

The reception-room was covered with a cool, rich Brussels 
carpet, on which a grate fire fell like burning roses, and a mir- 
ror over the mantel showed the steady procession, coming and 
going, and also the refreshment table in the rear, where many 
fell to food with the zest of camp guests. In these rooms Mr. 
Seward had often entertained his guests with those long mys- 
tifying conversations which made one think that the former 
anti-Mason had carried into private life the cabalistic grips, 
symbols, and secresies of the order he denounced. Here, it is 
pleasantly rumored, he described, with wonderful patience of 
repetition, the manner in which Payne attacked him, and he 
has illustrated the subject by rolling off and under his bed, to 
show how it was done. Now the place has such guests that 
the house of crime and revelry has been hallowed anew, sprink- 
led and purified, and the solemn sentries who walked before 
the doorposts down to the last day of Mr. Seward's tenure of 
office have betaken themselves to garrison. Only once has a 
ghost been seen, and that was a soldier, clad in blue, pacing, 
pacing, to and fro upon the pavement, but this proved to have 
been one of Seward's ex-guards, who had been off on a pro- 
longed spree, and with the first glimmering recovery of his 
wits he stole back to the post he had paced before so long, and 
gave rise to the suspicion of a terrible somnambulist. 

The gossip and anecdote of Washington society in our day 
is keen and ringing, and the Sunday press of the city generally 
picks it up and sends it around town. Mr. Sumner and Mr. 
Fish are said to have had their memorable quarrel at General 
Schenck's dinner-table as follows : 

" Shall I help you to some duck ?" said the ancient Fish; 
" Shall I help Mr. Sumner ?" said he ; 
Mr. Sumner did not wish / 

Any duck, so he said " pish ;" 

And he broke up that gallant eompany-ny-nj; 
And he broke up that gallant company. s • 



AMUSING QUARRELS. 695 

To the Senate, like a crab, ancient Fish he stuck, 

Out of Senate, like a flying iish, sought he 
Mr. Sumner for to chuck, 
For he wouldn't have some duck ; 

And the Senate to this measure did agree-e-e, 
And the Senate to this measure did agree. 

Ye statesmen, make a mem. ! "While our diplomat is Fish, 

Polite at the table you must be ; 
If some duck you do not wish, 
Never sauce your Fish with " ish," 

Or he'll chuck you from your Senate Committee-e-e, 
Or they'll chuck you from your Senate Committee. 

One of the celebrated stories told in our period at dinner 
tables referred to the notable, drawling bigot of high protection, 
William D. Kelley. 

For several years there had appeared on the tariff list an 
article called alkakange, and by the name it was supposed to 
be some powerful drug, and to it was uniformly attached a 
high duty. Many times when the puissant committee reached 
this word, it was suggested to reduce the duty, but straightway 
the high tariff committeemen rose to their feet and denounced 
any attempt to interfere with the protection of this valuable 
article. 

" Reduce the duty on alkakange," said Mr. Kelley, " and is 
it thus that the wages of the Ame-e-er-ek-e leaybereur are to 
re-de-euced ? Is an inde-e-eus-te-re-y to be thus ruthlessly ex- 
peosed to foreign ce-ompetition ? I oppose the ame-endment 
of this duty, and call upon me berethren of the Kemeitee to 
jeoin me." 

Up rises Horace Maynard : 

" I move to raise the duties on alkakange from sixty to six 
hundred per cent !" 

" Och ! smithereens ! bedad ! hulebeloo !" cries Dionysius 
Dennis O'McQarthy, of Syracuse, speaking the nicest Portu- 
guese accent, " is me heart's delight and the perride of me 
keuntry, alkakange to receive no protection ? Shades of 
Blarney and Onondaga forbid it !" 



696 THE BEST AND WORST -OF SOCIETY AT THE CAPITAL. 

" I am compelled," says Schenek, " to vote against any re- 
duction of the time-honored duty on alkakange. At this 
time, in particular, it requires our most delicate nurtur- 



ing 



i" 



Mr. Hooper puts his hand in his rearward coat-tail pocket, 
and says he,: . 

" Alkakange was regarded by James Otis, Samuel Adams, 
Cotton Mather, and Oakes Ames, as worthy of the fostering 
care of the nation. Duty and tradition compel me to vote for 
its retention, but at this special juncture I do not feel called 
upon to say that it requires more protection." 

" The lumber forests of Michigan," says Austin Blair, 
" murmur through their vast recesses : protect our tenderest 
sister, the pride of our solitude, alkakange !" 

Now, a few months ago, some obstinate free trader, coming 
to the name " alkakange," said aloud : 

/' What in the devil is Alkakange, anyhow ?" 

" Deoes the geenteil mean neot kneow ?'•;' said Kelley. 

" Here's freshness !" says Austin Blair. 

" Bludanouns !" cries McCarthy, " did ye iver hear sich 
ignerince ?" 

" Alkakange !" says Maynard, " need never ask the friends 
of oub industry to describe it." 

But this implicable free trader sent for an unabridged die- 
tionary, and looking it all through, he found no such word as 
alkakange. He got no more instruction from a cyclopaedia. 
He asked in vain of Dr. Ure's Dictionary of Science and Arts. 
The faces of the committee grew very long. Some one sug- 
gested that any druggist's apprentice could tell. 

So they sent to New York for a first-class chemist, and paid 
him mileage and per diem, and said he : 

" It's my belief that there's no such thing in all the length 
and breadth of pharmacopiae !" 

Here the high tariff folks exhibited indications of collapse. 

At last they raked out of the gulf of the Government print- 



A LAUGHABLE TARIFF. 697 

ing office an ancient proof-reader, and asked him to account 
for alkakange. , 

He put on three pairs of spectacles and a green shade over 
his eyes, and took up the printed list. 

" Well," he said, " this beats natur and Gineral Jackson, in 
whose administration I was appinted. Gentlemen, nineteen 
years ago, a lot.of quods, quoins, leads, and odd type, that we 
used to ballast the tariff forms with, ris up onexpected, 
through the fat matter of the tariff list, and they accidently 
spelled out the word alkakangie. I 'spose that you've bin a 
laying big duties,, on alkakangie ever since !" 

The old proof-reader put his hands on his hips, took off his 
spectacles, and laid down on the floor of the Ways and Means 
Committee, and laughed, and rolled for the space of an hour. 
By the time he got up, Kelley had been round to the Govern- 
ment Printing Office and got him discharged. 

A special meeting of the committee was at once called, and 
Mr. McCarthy rose : 

" I move ye* suf , that the article known as alkakange be put 
upon the fraa list !" 

" I object, says Horace Maynard — " move to substitute 500 
per cent." 

The fixed institutions of the Government, however humble 
the domain, contain so much talent, vitality, and, we might 
add, beauty, that it seems criminal to permit them to become 
the prey of political adventurers. Take the Treasury Depart- 
ment, for example, where several hundred female clerks are 
kept, many of them graceful and pure women, often of mar- 
tial parentage. If the Federal Government were itself a thing 
of dignity, and threw around these dames and graces its 
protecting arm, we should hear no more of polluted creatures 
being introduced into that society, to answer the ends of some 
sensualist, who can come to Congress to the misfortune of his 
country. Here is a little piece of poetry which may serve 
to round our chapter, and give a sketch of the widow work- 
ing in the Treasury, counting the public money : 



698 THE BEST AND WORST OF SOCIETY AT THE CAPITAL. 



The Lady of the .Treasury. 

1 Far up within that dungeon strong, 

Where Croesus doth his hoard enclose, 
She counts the bank-notes all day long, 

And keeps the tally as she goes ; 
Her hand upon a sponge she wets, . 

To turn the precious paper freer, 
And all the statesmen's grim vignettes 

Grow amorous as they seem to see her. 

2. No nymph nor maid that Darley drew 

Has form more flowing, nobler mien, 
Eyes of a softer, rarer hue, 

Or face so conscious, yet serene ; 
Though won and worn she once has been, 

And widow's colors yet attire her, 
Her virgin blush returns again, 

To see a fine, bold man admire her. 

3. Not often does her mind return . 

« 

Along the path of comforts fled. 
And if sometimes her lone heart yearn 

For that first love, her soldier dead, 
Life is too ripe for long lament ; 

No ghosts reproachful o'er her hover ; 
The strong, benignant Government 

She feels about her like a lover. 

4. No mother's hands will toil demean 

Who gives her orphan boys support; 
Her window looks down on the green 

Grass, growing in an inner court, 
And there upon one lonesome tree 

A mother bird sings fast as can it — 
So does her heart sing cheerily 

Within these gloomy bars of granite. 

5. No prude is she, to seek and pry 

If each one round her be a saint ; 
She knows her own soul pure and high, 
And nothing else can do her taint ; 



THE LADY OF THE TREASURY. 699 

She knows what dear temptations vex 

This weak and craving nature human, 
And how the mighty spell of sex 

O'ercomes a lonely, loving woman. 

6. Yet does she keep some equal snare, 

She knows the woman's power to charm: 
A ribbon fluttering in her hair ; 

The white revealment of her arm ; 
The scepter of her slender shoe, 

To make the pulse leap of the oldest ; 
The lifted lashes, showing through, 

Mischievous eyes to thrill the boldest. 

7. And well she knows not bonds, nor stocks, 

Nor bullion, merely, bring so oft 
Sly Mullett, or Comptroller Knox, 

Or cunning Boutwell to her croft. 
Her intuition teaches that 

The statesman still is but a sinner, 
And Mammon drops his key to chat 

As readily as General Spinner. 

8. Oh ! lucre, hast thou such romance ? 

Oh ! happy greenback, worn and old ! 
Kedeemed by her countenance, 

And by her touch made par with gold, 
What money current is like thee ? 

What promise hath so fair imprint ? 
What first Lord of the Treasury, 

Is like our Lady of the Mint ? 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 



EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

A neighbor of mine, possessed of a good horse, came to my 
house one Sunday afternoon and asked me to go over the field 
and dueling-ground of Bladensburg with him. I took the reins, 
the road being an old one to me, and in fifteen minutes we were 
across the Eastern Branch of the Potomac. 

I need not tell any of your readers who possess the luxury 
of a map that a mile below Washington City the Potomac re- 
ceives a tributary called the East Branch. The East Branch, 
so called to distinguish it from the Nortli and the South Branch 
of the main Potomac — which unite near Cumberland, more 
than one hundred miles above Washington — was originally 
named the Anacostia ; but, except as painted on the front of a 
suburban engine house, which stands near the East Branch, 
" Anacostia " is an obsolete term. Formerly the East Branch 
was navigable several miles above Washington and large ves- 
sels cleared from Bladensburg piers |o the West Indies and to 
Liverpool. But its length is insignificant — less than that of 
Bull Bun or Antietam Creek. It is a cove merely, taking ad- 
vantage of some flats to overflow them, and above Bladensburg 
it divides into a pair of brooks, frothy after a rain, but in fair 
weather merely rills. 

From the city to Bladensburg by that nearer route which the 
militia retreated by — the British after them hard — and by which 
carriage loads of insulted honor trotted to Bladensburg with one 
flash of powder and twenty flasks of cock-tails to each — it is no 

(700), 



OYER THE SAME ROAD THAT BOOTH TRAVELED. 701 

more than five miles. In the present instance, however, we 
crossed the East Branch and followed its farther bank to the 
village, by which our way led through more novel scenery, but 
was prolonged by several miles. 

The East Branch divides the city from the peninsula of dark- 
ness. On this side are the spires and haze of the metropolis, 
the dome of the Capitol in the midst of its basin, like an egg 
end-upwards in a bird's nest, and all the instances and articles 
of life, Society and human contact push to the water side. 
Beyond the East Branch is a squalid suburb, scrambling up 
barren hills, a lunatic asylum, a horse-boiling factory, deserted 
earthen forts. Behind that wall of hills is the wilderness of 
Edom, the land of Wilkes Booth's ride toward the coast, the 
cape of Point Lookout. A little old creaking stage goes every 
day through the clefts of those hills, carrying a haggard mail- 
bag. Every night it comes back from Marlboro, or Leonards- 
town, or Port Tobacco, like an old hunch-backed hermit from a 
land of caves and ghosts. What it saw behind there, in the 
starved peninsula, no one prefers to guess. Perhaps the face 
of Dr. Mudd, telling the neighbors at his gate about the Dry 
Tortugas. Perhaps the woman at Port Tobacco whose heathen 
children wear the likeness of the hanged Atzerodt. Perhaps 
John Lloyd at the old Surratt Tavern, who hears every night 
in his dreams the voice of his landlady saying : " Get them 
shooting irons ready for to-night. They will be called for !" 

Whatever the visions on the roadside or in the woods which 
are beheld by the driver of this old stage, he always looks to 
me leaner, more solemn and more mysterious every time he 
comes through those hill-clefts. Now and then he has a pas- 
senger who seems to have been rescued from captivity, some 
sunburnt and hairy Selkirk or Crusoe, wild-eyed, as if used to 
hearing only crows and parrots talk. The mail-bag is like a hol- 
low belly, a very weazen of a pouch, as if it were the sack of a 
scavenger in Sahara. It looks like a mail-bag for whom nobody 
waits when the stage, with its old driver, creeps into the little 



702 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

Cross-Roads Post-Office, where the Postmaster, perhaps, carries 
the Post-Office in his hat. 

"Any letter for me ?" says some old crone or prodigal son 
exiled off there to keep swine, coming up with this listless in- 
quiry once a month. 

" Yes," says . the Postmaster, producing the Post-Office out 
of his hat, " hyur's one tolabul old, and. I reckon it's- a dead 
letter." 

" But it ought to be alive, considerin' whom it came from !" 
says the prodigal son : and this joke makes the old cross-roads 
cheer up as if a ghastly blue light had been Set off in the dark. 

We cross the East Branch bridge over the same planks which 
echoed to the hoofs of Booth's and Harold's horses. We pass 
the guard-house of heavy, bark-covered timbers, loopholed, 
standing yet, where Booth was challenged. We leave to the 
right the turnpike road he fled along in the night, going down 
into the necks and swamps of Charles County — pain in his bro- 
ken ankle, the fresh ecstacy of his first murder in his temples, 
the thought of the aroused theatre behind, and Death stalking 
in to stop the play like the most stirring. actor of them all. 
We turn northward along that bank of the East Branch oppo- 
site Washington, and versatile landscapes lie along our road. 
Now from some crest we see the city across the water, with 
Arlington crowned far beyond it, and Georgetown College tur- 
retts standing in the plumage of sunset. Now we descend 
into some nook, where nature has not one neighbor, except 
some fish-hawk, struggling to a blasted tree-top with a herring 
in its beak. There the cannibal bird eats screaming, as if re- 
venge were in its appetite ; and round the base of its column 
lies rotting timber, swept down by frequent freshets from the 
old forts above. 

Again we rise through a ravine to a hill, where we are almost 
level with the nearest breastwork, and can look through its 
falling embrasures. Some negro has built himself a cabin of 
the timbers of its bomb-proof, and the gray smoke curls into 
patches of fir trees, where his hut clings to the heights preca- 



THE DUELING GROUNDS. 703 

riously. Turning again toward the city, we see, across the 
river, the Poor House of Washington. « 

Looking still across the river we see in a darker wrinkle of 
the grassy bluffs - the Cemetery of Congress, of little repute in 
these days of greater places of interest, but good enough to 
take the bones of mighty George Clinton and Elbridge Gerry, 
two of our Vice-Presidents, and of William Wirt. Now in an 
unpopular quarter the grave-yard gets only the bones of private 
souls, and therefore ancient fame has some show in it beyond 
the reach of shoddy and " style." (See p. 639.) 

A railroad from Washington to Baltimore, and the lower 
necks of Maryland crosses the Eastern Branch under the tour- 
ist's eye. 

Wirt was born in Bladen sburg, a hamlet which now bears 
out the reputation of Nazareth. As we keep steadily toward 
it, the river breaks in view to our left sometimes, widening in 
a meadow, deepening under a woody bluff, flowing narrowly 
between the bushes and willows. On the right the heights are 
vigorous with timber. The rains have cut broad, marshy 
swaths^ of the width of a broad city street, round the caps of 
these heights, and above the bridge we have crossed two miles 
or more, in one of these marshy coves, lies the duelling ground 
of Graves and Cilley. 

You cannot cure the Bladensburg and Washington villagers 
of their belief that this duel between Jonathan Cilley, of Maine, 
a Democrat, and W. T. Graves, of Kentucky, a Whig, was 
fought on any other spot than the regular dueling ground at 
Bladensburg. It was in truth fought here in Marlboro, and 
one of its survivors, Mr. Jones, of Wisconsin, Cilley's second, 
walked over the ground with a newspaper reporter several years 
ago. He paced the distance, if I am not misinformed, placed 
the men in imagination, again, and related the story with the 
vivid interest of an actor in it. In like manner, Aaron Burr 
is said to have exhibited the battle ground on Weehawken 
Heights, where he killed Hamilton, and told with the last min- 
uteness the circumstances of the tragedy. More people live 



704 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

who figured on this site of Cilley's death than survive almost 
any historical combat, t 

First, there is James Watson Webb, our late noisy Minister 
Resident at Rio Janeiro, and the especial pet of Mr. Seward ; 
he was the original challenger of Cilley. He lives on in 
boisterous vitality, and Cilley has been dead more than thirty 
years. Webb's quarrel was the cause of Cilley's death as 
much as if I had put a substitute into battle, and he had been 
shot in my place. The report of Congress extant upon this 
subject says: 

" The committee entertain no doubt that James Watson 
Webb has been guilty of a breach of privilege of the House ; 
but they also concur unanimously in the opinion that if there 
be any real ground to believe that a conspiracy to assassinate 
Mr. Cilley actually existed, as set forth in an atrocious paper 
drawn up by him, signed by his friends, sworn to and published 
in the New York Courier and Enquirer, he be left to the chas- 
tisement of the court of law and of public opinion, and that 
the House will consult its own dignity and the public interest 
by bestowing on him no further notice." 

In this elastic world, however, public opinion goes backward 
often, and Mr. Webb has had his full share of honors despite 
the opinion of Congress. One of our Presidents, Jackson, and 
one of our Vice-Presidents, Burr, have killed people in duels. 
Jackson was nevertheless raised to the Chief Magistracy. 

Next, there live of the family of the successful duelist, Mr. 
Graves, his widow and several children. The present writer 
has had the pleasure of being a visitor at the house of Mr. 
Graves so recently as 1868. It is in Louisville, and is now the 
home of a son-in-law, Mr. Osborne, a journalist. Said the 
latter to me on that occasion: 

" Mr. Gath, Mrs. Graves never knew her husband's where- 
abouts on the day of that duel till that duel was done." 

Next, there exist both the rifles used on that field, and the 
fatal one is possessed by the heirs of John C. Rives, who lived 
but a mile or two from the place of conflict. 



• SURVIVORS OF A CELEBRATED DUEL. 705 

i 

And lastly, old Henry A. Wise is living, Graves's second, 
himself hanging on to life by the ears and eyelids, and soon to 
be summoned into the presence of old John Brown. In this 
duel he was the industrious bagpipe. 

I stood on this lonely spot a few days ago, as I have said, 
and thought again how contemptible every man in the affray 
must have felt, when Cilley dropped his rifle with a groan, 
cried to the next man, " I am shot," pressed both hands upon 
his wound and fell dead. The scene -of the beastly tournament 
is not known to be such by any of the neighbors now. It is 
lonely as if cursed, but the " affair of honor" is an old barn- 
yard tradition, long expired, at least in that neighborhood. 

On another occasion, I rode with Mr. B. B. Wight, a fellow- 
correspondent, to Surrattsville, ten miles from the end of the 
Eastern Branch bridge. 

I had gone down to the old town of Upper Marlborough, a 
venerable and ague-ridden place, the county-seat of Prince 
George, where Reverdy Johnson studied law. This county for- 
merly contained more slaves and shipped more tobacco than 
any in Maryland. ' The road from Washington to Marlborough 
has been macadamized and graveled since the war, and it is now 
one of the best roads in tb.e region of the city. There is little 
to be seen on the way except the Hamlet of Long Old Field, 
where both the British and the American armies bivouaced in 
1814. Beyond this point the old road by which the British 
advanced, is discerned winding along the way like a hidden 
brook all overgrown with rank shade. Marlborough has not 
at present above three hundred people, though it formerly had 
five times as many. The " Star Spangled Banner" was written 
by Francis Scott Key, while seeking to recover a citizen of 
Marlborough whom the British had carried off on their retreat, 
for breaking his cartel, and firing on their rear, — one Doctor 
Beans. Key undertook to obtain his release, and was carried 
on the British fleet to Baltimore where he witnessed the bom- 
bardment and sketched the song. 

After looking into the old court-house and the three grave- 
45 



706 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

yards of Marlborough, and seeing the negroes carousing on 
Saturday night around the stores, and making a night's rest 
on a hard bed, we drove back in the morning nearly tb Long- 
Old Field, and then taking a by-road to the south passed many 
Catholic farmers riding to church on horseback, and changed 
our direction at the Wood-yard. , 

The Wood-yard stands at the source of Piscataway Creek, and 
near by the ground is marshy. An old mill, mill-race, and a 
couple of deserted barns are within a few furlongs distance in an 
old sloping field. The aspect of the place is dismal, except 
that a large dwelling surveys a part of the scenery from a 
moundy hill above the deep dell of the stream. 'Here the 
American army tarried a time awaiting the British, under Gen- 
eral Ross. The movements were about as follows : Commo- 
dore Barney, with four hundred men, sailors and marines, 
marched into Upper Marlborough, on the evening of August 
21, 1814, and left it next morning for American position at 
the Wood-yard, where he was joined by Captain Miller, with 
eighty marines, and five pieces of artillery. The British were 
now advancing directly upon the Wood-yard, but suddenly they 
turned off to the right anc^ advanced upon Marlborough, when 
immediately the American army marched by the left, and en- 
camped that night at Long Old Field, or " Battalion Old Field." 
Barney's fleet was blown up a few miles from Marlborough, on 
the 22d. The same night the President and several of the 
heads of departments slept close in the rear of the army,. of 
about 3,200 men, and President Madison reviewed them on the 
morning of the 23d, and made a speech. Nearly all the army 
remained this day at Old Field, while General Winder pro- 
ceeded with Major Peter, and a small body to skirmish 
with the British, near the present hamlet of Centreville. At 
sunset the whole army abandoned Long Old ' Field, after one 
day's occupation, and before midnight crossed the Eastern 
Branch bridge, and entered Washington. Nearly at the same 
time, the British coming up to the Long Old Field, passed 
through it wheeled to the right, and were in quick march for 



SURRATTSVILLE. 707 

Bladensburg, where the fight began next morning. On the 
night of the 25th, the British moved back by the same road to 
Marlborough, and near Long Old Field, rested the forenoon of 
the 26th, wholly worn out with marching and fighting. That 
night they reposed again in Marlborough, and much of the 
next day. 

Three miles to the South of the Wood-yard, on higher 
grounds and a sandy plain, is the point celebrated more than half 
a. century after the Wood-yard had been commemorated as 
Surrattsville. A frame dwelling of commodious size, at a cross- 
roads,, with a blacksmith shop and two houses adjacent, in the 
midst of small forest clearing, with a peach-orchard, the 
peach-orchard at that side of the house which was formerly a 
tavern, bar, and post-office. There was nothing remarkable 
about the house ; it was painted white, and a neat yard and 
front porch, with some pigeon-boxes and small oaks, cedars, 
and locusts stood at hand. While making a sketch of the 
house, the proprietor came out and told us that John Surratt 
was teaching school at Frederick, and John Lloyd, who kept 
tavern here on the fatal afternoon and night when Mrs. Sur- 
ratt, Booth, and Harold drove out from Washington, was now 
living in the latter city. At the time we spoke, tobacco hogs- 
heads were strewn around the lawn — that same lawn on which 
Mrs. Surratt had halted her buggy, and, dismounting, told 
Lloyd to have them shooting-irons ready, as they would be called 
for that .night ; the same lawn on which Booth and Harold 
had paused near midnight of that same day, Booth crying out 
triumphantly : " Do you want to hear some news ? we have 
murdered the President and the Secretary of State !" 

The story of this. house, briefly given, is this : It was built 
by Mrs. Surratt' s husband who was not a Catholic, while she 
was a convert. During the war, the tavern being conveniently 
near Washington, and on the road to the lower necks of the 
Potomac, became a rebel post-office and stopping-place, for 
spies, Jews, and all manner of intcr-plyers. Mrs. Surratt re- 
moved to Washington, and it is believed that her house there, 



708 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

in the neighborhood of the Patent Office, was also a way-place 
for blockade-runners. Late in the war, a man named John M. 
Lloyd took the tavern and kept it as a drinking place, although 
he was a farmer. Lloyd testified that a few weeks before the 
assassination, Surratt, Harold, and Atzerodt came to his house 
and Surratt brought two carbines with ammunition, a rope about 
three times a man's length, and a monkey wrench. Surratt 
asked Lloyd to conceal those articles, took Lloyd into a room he 
had never been in, immediately above the store-room, in the 
back part of the building. They were hidden under the joists 
of the second floor, by Surratt's direction. Some time elapsed 
until Lloyd was riding to Washington, four days before the as- 
sassination, when he met Mrs. Surratt at the end of the bridge, 
and she told him to get the shooting irons out ready, as they 
would be wanted very soon. It is probable that the conspira- 
tors had, up to this time, designed to abduct Mr. Lincoln, and 
expected to tie or hang him with the rope they had secured. 
But when Booth suddenly resolved to kill Mr. Lincoln, at the 
theatre, he sent Mrs. Surratt on the afternoon of April 14th, 
with a field-glass, to tell John Lloyd to have the shooting-irons, 
as she called them, ready for that night, as some parties would 
call for them. Mrs. Surratt was driven out to her farm by Lewis 
Weichmann, a boarder in her house, and a government clerk, 
who had been a school-mate of her son. Weichmann testified 
that as they were going to take the buggy at Mrs. Surratt's 
city house, Booth talked to Mrs. Surratt in the parlor. The 
twain left Washington about half-past two o'clock, got to Sm- 
rattsville about half-past four, and there found Lloyd who had 
just returned from court at Marlborough, bringing in some fish 
and oysters. While Weichmann loitered at the bar and 
around the yard, Mrs. Surratt went into the house, and Lloyd 
says that she gave him a field-glass, and told him to have two 
bottles -of whisky, and the shooting-irons ready, as some par- 
ties would call for them that night. 

About midnight that Friday, or within six hours after Mrs. 
Surratt left the tavern, Harold, Booth's traveling companion, 



booth's hiding places. 709 

burst into the old tavern and said, " Lloyd, for God's sake, 
make haste and get those things." Lloyd looked out on his 
yard, and in the moonshine he saw a man on a light-colored 
horse. He was told that this man had his leg broken, and 
therefore only one of the carbines was requested. Everybody 
was excited, according to the evidence, and Harold and Booth 
drank the better part of a bottle of whisky. Lloyd was already 
drunk when he got back from Marlborough. Stopping no more 
than five minutes, the two guilty outlaws galloped down the 
neck of Charles County. The next day, soldiers from Wash- 
ington reconnoitered all around Surrattsville, and passed further 
down the County, and on Sunday night the tavern was searched 
and after several days of obstinate silence and denial, Lloyd re- 
lated the secret at last. The two outlaws rode that night 
through the hamlets of Tee Bee and Beantown, to a doctor's 
house, in the edge of Bryantown, thirty miles from Washing- 
ton. Harold knocked at Dr. Mudd's door, at day-break, and 
Mudd and Harold helped Booth off his horse, took him into the 
house and „set his leg. Booth also shaved off his mustache, 
and Dr. Mudd improvised a pair of crutches for him. Mudd 
had been acquainted with Booth in Washington, and they had 
been seen to have confidential interviews at the National Ho- 
tel. That Saturday morning, after two or three hours' rest, 
Booth and Harold got into Zachariah, or Zekiah Swamp, and 
Mudd denied any knowledge of Booth as late as the following 
Tuesday. Booth left his boot in the house with " J. Wilkes " 
written inside it, and this was found when Mudd was arrested 
one week afterwards. 

Of Booth and Harold nothing more is known with certainty 
for several days. Extracts from Booth's diary, the nature of 
the country, and the period of their disappearance would indi- 
cate that in the pain and fever of his broken leg, Booth re- 
mained in the neighborhood of Zekiah Swamp, and Allen's 
Fresh, near the present Terminus at Pope's Creek, of the Bal- 
timore and Potomac railroad. He may have been harbored by 
some of Mudd's acquaintances, and this was a strong position, 



710 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

almost surrounded by the waters of the Wicomico and the Po- 
tomac, in a country sparsely settled. One week after tlie 
murder, on Friday, a whiteman's canoe disappeared from near 
Swan Point, and the same afternoon some men at work in 
Westmoreland county, Virginia, only a few miles, from the 
birth-place of Washington, saw two men land, tie the boat's 
rope to a stone and fling it ashore, and strike at once across a 
ploughed field, in the direction of King George's Court House. 
These facts were reported to Washington, and a small detach- 
ment of cavalry and two detective police were despatched on 
Monday, the eleventh day after the assassination, to Ball Plain 
to cut off the fugitives. If there was any logic in Booth's 
course he probably designed to cross the State of Virginia 
through the mountain country, and work his way amongst the 
mountains to the Gulf or to Texas. He had killed his horse 
in the Maryland swamps, and crippled, sick, and without other 
companions than a mere boy, his prospects were gloomy 
enough. He crossed the Rappahannock river with some Con- 
federate cavalry just disbanded, and laid up at a farm-house, 
near the hamlet of Bowling Green. There the cavalry party, 
commanded by Lieutenant Doherty, surrounded him in a barn, 
in the dark of the morning of Wednesday, the thirteenth day 
after the assassination. Young Harold gave himself up. The 
barn was set on fire, and Booth, shot by a soldier named 
Boston Corbett, expired just after sunrise, on the porch of 
Garrett's Virginia farmhouse. 

Payne, the assassin of Seward, was too late to get across 
the Eastern Branch bridge," and, riding to the forts north of 
Washington, abandoned his horse, took up a pick, and in a 
clumsy disguise returned to Mrs. Surratt's house just as the 
officers had arrested her. A fellow named Atzerodt, who was 
appointed to kill Andrew Johnson, and who lived at Port To- 
bacco, a low place in Charles county, was arrested at the house 
of one Richter, near Germanstown, Montgomery county, north- 
west of Washington. Mrs. Surratt, Payne, Harold, and Atzer- 
odt, were hanged. John Surratt escaped to Canada, and 



BOOTH NOT A BRUTUS. 711 

thence to Rome and Egypt. He possibly might have saved 
his mother's life by giving himself up for her, but he was a 
worthless fellow, and a civil jury failed to convict him. He 
illustrated his entire contemptibility of assassination by deliver- 
ing lectures on the subject in the- year 1869. 

It appears to have been shown to the cooler judgment of 
men that the assassination of President Lincoln was no matter 
to which the Confederate Government was accessory. . Wilkes 
Booth was the conceiver and chief of the whole affair. He 
was the son of an actor of Jacobin tendencies, who was fond 
of playing Brutus, and was accustomed to mistake himself for 
that character, to the risk of his fellow actors. John Wilkes 
Booth, named for a violent London politician,* grew up with a 
stagey code of morals, and had been a volunteer against John 
Brown's band. Of a subtle and diseased nature, enamored of 
the Confederacy, proud of his physical powers, and seeking 
illustrious notoriety, he aimed to become a historical person- 
age, and he has succeeded ; but mankind has not seen fit to 
place him in the list w T ith Brutus. He belonged to the dark 
line of Ravailac, Lorenzino de Medici, Guy Fawkes, and Bal- 
thasar Gerard. 

Returning to the theme of Surrattsville, I may give a scrap 
of conversation which I held in 1867, with Lewis J. Weich- 
mann, who told me of his first visit to Surrattsville, while Mrs. 
Surratt inhabited the tavern, one year or more before the 
murder. He said as follows :, 

" It was on a Friday afternoon, in March, rainy and dreary, 
when at last I went down to Surrattsville, with John. He ■ 
came for me in a buggy, and the road was so rutty and miry 
that we were four hours on the way. On coming in sight of 
the house, I was miserably disappointed. The theme of so 
much panegyric was a solitary frame tavern, at a cross-road, a 
few sheds and barns around it, and a hitching- stall, and a 
peach orchard reaching behind. The farm consisted of 300 
acres, and it was afterward let, with the tavern, for $600 a 
year. A small porch stood in the middle, on which opened a 



712 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

hall reaching quite through the house. At the foot of this 
hall, to the left, was the bar-room and post-office, with a door 
opening upon one of the cross roads, and to the right were the 
parlor and dining room. Altogether there were eight rooms, 
comfortably furnished. Mrs. Surratt received me pleasantly, 
and we had a good warm supper, after which I went awhile to 
the bar-room, where there were some of the Rebel farmers of 
the neighborhood, come to get their letters, to lounge, and to 
play cards. John kept the bar, and we had a game with 
two Jewish persons, who had carpet-bags with them. These 
carpet-bsigs Mrs. Surratt came in and removed. Their owners 
left before day-light next morning, and one of them, named 
Jacobs, was arrested, crossing the Potomac, with $50,000 upon 
him. Mrs. Surratt was proud, and counted her beads a great 
deal. She was a convert, and not an original Catholic, and 
her husband was a Protestant till his death, which happened 
of apoplexy in August, 1862. There were three or four 
negroes about the place ; it was a dull, cross-roads' existence, 
but pleasant for a day or two to a stranger. Next morning, at 
daylight we were awakened by very beautiful music. It was a 
brass band, come out from the Washington Navy Yard, to 
serenade the Democratic county officers just elected. Among 
the hangers-on was a seedy, frowsy, monkey-faced boy, whom 
Surratt introduced to me as Mr. Harold. He came in with 
the rest, took a drink, and went further up the road with them. 
I left the house on Monday, pleased with my visit, and we 
stopped at a drug store by the Navy- Yard, Surratt and I, to 
get a cigar. The boy, Harold, was clerk there. Surratt told 
me, on the way, that his brother, Isaac Surratt, an engineer, 
had left his home on the 7th of March, 1861, at the news of 
Lincoln's inauguration, and gone to Texas, where he had been 
ever since in the Confederate service." 

Allison Nailor, jr., told me, in 1873, that he hired to Harold 
the single-footed racker which Booth rode on the night of the 
murder of President Lincoln. Harold had been introduced to 
Nailor by Atzerodt, who kept his horses at Nailor's stables. 



PART OF THE ASSASSINATION. 713 

This man Mr. Nailor describes to have been a low-flung Ger- 
man, almost Jewish in his nature, who traded in horses and 
was a great coward, but yet might serve the purposes of a con- 
spiracy in case" he could make anything out of it and go at 
liberty. He belonged to that class of men who would take 
advantage of a condition of war to rob, outrage, and, if neces- 
sary, murder prisoners and non-combatants, and yet had no 
manliness. Mr. Nailor says that his horse was kept out for so 
long a time that his niaif was apprehensive that the hirer had 
got drunk, and being in some manner responsible for the horse 
kept the stable open and listened to hear him. Late in the 
evening he heard two horses come down Pennsylvania Avenue 
around the Treasury building, and One of them he knew by the 
time of the step to be the horse loaned to Harold. On the 
east side of 14th street the stableman presented himself as if 
to stop the horses. Seeing him Harold and his companion 
turned sharply to the left and went at a high rate of speed up 
the side of Willard's Hotel, and, turning into F street passed 
out towards the Navy Yard. Mr. Nailor feels satisfied that 
the man with Harold was Payne or Powell, and that they were 
just then returning from the attempted assassination of Secre- 
tary Seward. Harold staid outside while Payne undertook to 
enter the house and do the work. 

Mr. Nailor's man immediately returned to the stable and 
saddling a horse rode out toward the Navy Yard bridge. He 
had heard Harold and Atzerodt talk together in the afternoon 
about lower Maryland, and supposed that a drunk was going 
on and the favorite horse of the stable was being ridden down 
into those country necks. He proceeded along and having 
crossed Capitol Hill, when he got to the Navy Yard bridge, the 
guard told him that two persons had just crossed over and that 
one of them rode such a horse as he described ; this proved 
that Booth and Harold had met beforehand at or about Ford's 
Theater and that they had changed horses, Booth taking Nailor's 
horse. The guard said to Mr. Nailor's man : " You can go over 
the bridge it you want to, but the countersign will be given out 



714 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

before you come back and you cannot return to-night. Satisfied 
from the description that he had got on the track of the parties, the 
stableman returned, and as he came down the Avenue saw groups 
of people, and when near the stable heard some one say that 
one of the murderers had ridden out of town on a single-footed 
racking horse. Mr. Nailor never got his pony, and believes 
from the evidence that when Booth was about to escape across 
the Potomac he rode it down into the swamp and shot it. He 
never demanded the horse, being glad to keep out of the Old 
Capitol Prison, for such was the panic at that time on the 
subject of the assassination that nobody had a chance for jus- 
tice. Booth's horse had been hired in the rear of the National 
Hotel, at Pumphreys ; it was a blackish bay, and he never re- 
turned it. 

It may be interesting reading while on this subject to de- 
scribe a scene between a clergyman and Mr. Lincoln. 

Dr. Byron Sunderland, a Yermonter, long resident at Wash- 
ington as pastor of the First Presbyterian church, is a small, 
active, indignant gentleman, with a fierce patriotism that fath- 
omed the pro-slavery spirit years before the Avar, and saw that 
no compromise could be expected with it but that made over its 
decapitated trunk. Accordingly, when Mr. Lincoln arrived in 
Washington, he and others of his congregation hastened to 
wait upon the President and urged him to take a determined 
philanthropic and patriotic front. The first of these visits was 
made by Mr. Zenos Bobbins, a resident here for thirty years, 
but a native of New Hampshire. 

Mr. Bobbins had been acquainted with Mr. Lincoln when 
the latter was a Member of Congress, and he said to him in 
the White House the day before the call was issued for 75,- 
000 men : 

" Mr. President, we hope — all your friends hope — that there 
will be no more blank cartridges, but a square, direct, and 
powerful exhibition of the strength of the Government." . 

" Are those your opinions ?" said Mr. Lincoln. 

" Yes, sir !" 



ANECDOTE OF MR. LINCOLN. 715 

" Then I suppose that you will be interested in the newspa- 
pers to-morrow !" said the President. 

And next day the proclamation appeared. 

In like manner, Mr. Robbins and Dr. Sunderland went to 
the White JEIouse a few clays before the expiration of the time 
that the President had given the South to submit under penalty 
of emancipation. 

Said Mr. Robbins : 

" We are confident that you will come up to the mark, Mr. 
Lincoln." 

" Oh," said the President, " I don't know about that. You 
know Peter denied his Master." 

" I don't think you will, sir !" said Dr. Sunderland, promptly, 
" we are full of faith and prayer that you will make clean sweep 
for the Right." 

Mr. Lincoln's face resolved into its half shrewd, half sad 
expression. He took a chair, and leaning toward the clergy- 
man, said : 

■' Doctor, it's very hard sometimes to know what is right ! 
You pray often and honestly, but so do those people across the 
lines. They pray and all their preachers pray devoutly. You 
and I do not think them justified in praying for their objects, 
but they pray earnestly, no doubt ! If you and I had our own 
way, doctor, we would settle this war without bloodshed, but 
Providence permits blood to be shed. It's hard to tell what 
Providence wants of us. Sometimes we, ourselves, are more 
humane than the Divine mercy seems to us to be." 

This familiar conversation exhibits the struggle in Lincoln's 
mind before the commission of- any leading act of his adminis- 
tration. It shows that the act of emancipation was no mere mili- 
tary thunder, but a triumph over grave scruples, an anxiety to 
be vindicated and to do only right. It was an act counselled by 
thought and prayer, turned over in the wakefulness of night, 
subjected to the accusations and cavils of its own author and 
to the tests of argument and law, and like the solemn founding 
of the Plymouth State upon the Mayflower, it was among the 
soberest resolutions of history. 



716 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

Mr. Bobbins, of whom I have written, was the patent lawyer 
who obtained Mr. Lincoln's patent for lightening the draught 
of steamboats upon Western rivers, a patent applied for while 
Mr. Lincoln was a member of Congress, living here in com- 
parative obscurity. Mr. Lincoln came into Mr. Robbins' office, 
at the corner of F and Seventh streets, with the model under 
his arm, and the same model now is one of the most precious 
relics of the Patent Office. 

The water is often so low in Western rivers that steamers 
get aground and lie helpless for weeks. Mr. Lincoln's contri- 
vance was to set air chambers under the guards., made of can- 
vas or oilskin, and by inflating these to increase the buoyancy 
of the boat in the dry seasons. It is no reflection Upon our genial 
martyr to say that his patent takes poor rank among inventions, 
but it shows that his mind was ever at work to do good, and 
this model is not the least of his monuments. 

Andrew Johnson pardoned the remaining conspirators, if 
such they were, Mudd, Arnold, O'Laughlin, and Spangler in 
1867 and permitted the bones of the rest to be disinterred. 

Mrs. Surratt's body was exhumed and decently buried. It 
was decomposed to a shriveled pulp of mummy, and a worm- 
befriending skeleton. The head was turned aside, as by the 
wrench of the rope ; the gaiters on her feet were in mouldy 
preservation; the hair was luxuriant as in life. The relics 
were put in a coffin and interred north of the city in a shady 
cemetery, where her grave will often be the inspiration of a 
thrill or a paragraph. 

The fate of this woman will be investigated in the future 
with keen interest, but I incline to the belief that it will meet 
with posterity's acquiescence as pitiful, only because she was 
a woman, but deserved because she was privy to the murder of 
a just and blameless ruler. .)( Some Albert Smith may turn her 
memory over, and with it make a heroine to match Brinvil- 
liers ; but the greater halo of the murdered President will 
make her grave, if not a shunned, an unhallowed, spot forever. 
In common life she was a woman without romance, without 



^ 






THE FINALE OF THE CONSPIRATORS. 717 

character or affections, eminent . enough for illustration, with 
little beauty ; and between a country tavern and a lodging-house 
in town, the poet must spin her misericordia. Art is long, but 
it will scarcely pass the benignant statue to apostrophize the 
toadstool at his feet. 

"Wilkes Booth's body was finally dug up at the Penitentiary, 
"Washington, and sent to Baltimore — a mass cf corruption in 
a blanket, the head off the spine, part of the spine and one leg 
gone, but an old shoe and a boot remaining, and a suit of hand- 
some short hair clinging to a skull ! They put the carcass in 
the old stable where he kept his poor nag the night before the 
murder — the nag he rode like a demon across the bridge of 
Styx — and there behind the scene of his supposed glory he lay 
as he had lain the last night of his life, in a barn amongst the 
cattle. 

Atzerodt's body was found to be a dissevered skull and a 
crooked spine. I saw this poor blabberer hanged, with a bag 
over his head not whiter than his bleached face. It was the 
poor white trash that did to death the great human Friend at 
last. Have mercy on them, who know not what they do ! 

Meantime Harold, the pal of Wilkes Booth, has been buried 
in the Congressional Cemetery, close by William Wirt, George 
Clinton, Elbridge Gerry, and other great people. This seems 
to be a case of irreverent Gerrymandering. The old arsenal, 
where the assassins lie, has been pulled down. The great 
crime has passed out of the revenge into the pity of men. 

The lower counties of Maryland are good but hilly roads. 
There are no taverns fit for lodging except at Port Tobacco, 
Leonardtown, and Marlborough. One has only to go fifteen 
miles out of Washington to find cross gates on all the roads 
which he must dismount and open. At the same time a kind 
of a rude hospitality prevails, and if the tourist will supply 
himself with a few bottles of whisky he can pay for his wel- 
come. The new railroad system may have some effect on these 
old slave-holding Catholic countries, but they will come up 
slowly as they declined, like a patient after the typhus fever. 



718 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

Quite a different country lies to the northwest of "Washing- 
ton, and this has also been opened ,>y rajpvay. As we have 
given some time to sketching the lower country we may jot 
down some points about Montgomery county. 
/""The Metropolitan Branch railroad striking boldly across the 
( county northwestward for forty-two miles, overtaking the Balti- 
more and Ohio old stem at Point of Rocks, will be of the greatest 
possible local advantage to "Washington City. Our road to Bal- 
timore, passing over a low country, chiefly alluvial, and by 
the beds of marshy and pestilential streams, has not developed 
a single town of importance. Laurel is the nearest approach 
to a settlement, and here are recent signs of animation around 
Annapolis Junction, but Bladensburg and Elkridge are no 
larger than they were- in the administration of Jefferson, when 
the stage coach was our locomotive. The old road affords 
no healthy and convenient opportunities for villa-sites, and 
hence Washington has not a single railway suburb. Our res- 
ident- people must send their families in the Summer to the 
North or the springs, while, if there were railway opportuni- 
ties to reach the high grounds above Rockville, or the upper 
waters of Rock creek, or the terraces below Parr's bridge, many 
clerks, chiefs of bureaux, and business people would build 
country boxes and enjoy the society of their wives and children 
in the warmest weather. In fact, our only settlement of late 
i 1 ! birth and growth is what is known as Clerksville, out on the 
/ Rock Creek side; in that direction is our riding and sauntering 
[ done ; by that cool valley lies our gate to the realms of Flora, and 
\ there arc our finest country seats — as those of M. G. Emery, 
Alexander Shepherd, and Montgomery and Frank Blair. 

Six miles from the city is " Silver Spring," the first station 
of importance, the estate of Francis Blair, Sr., lying off half 
a mile to the left, and the more modern estate of Montgomery 
Blair a few rods further, Francis Blair's place is one of the 
quaintest and completest in this part of America ; a cottage 
house suited to the climate, surrounded by graperies, and con- 
servatories, supplied with water by modern processes, orna 



THE BLAIR ESTATES. 719 

merited by shade and lawns, the hedges planted like palisades <* 
and miniature a^orescent bastions, making the path to the ' 
house a delightful series of confrontings and surprises. Mont- 
gomery Blair's house is a bran new adjunct, standing on a{ 
high hill and showing its smart French roof to the sun. The I 
station of Silver Spring is 350 feet above tide water, or about 
seventy feet higher than the dome of the Capitol. 

Eight miles beyond Silver Spring is Rockville station, half a ' 
mile to the left of the' railroad. Several fine old estates are 
seen from the road, such as the Compton House and Brent's 
Hall, both considered to be very respectable in their day. We 
already see in plain view the distant cone of Sugar Loaf Moun- 
tain, twenty-five miles to the west. Rockville is the court-house 
seat of what has generally been considered the poorest county 
of Maryland. From this point to the Monocacy the water sup- 
ply is so unreliable that the railroad has been embarrassed as 
to its water stations. There are but two mills on the road, 
one at Rock Creek, the other at Big Seneca, beyond Rockville. 
The old county hamlet is a Maryland Catholic settlement, with 
a neat brick court-house set in shade trees and inclosed by an 
iron railing. Here are kept the records of pre-historic Wash- 
ington and the provincial rolls of the subsequent District of / 
Columbia. Over the site of this town passed a division of 
Braddock's army, marching from Alexandria to Frederick. 

Near Gaithersville, at Middleburg Mills, is the estate of 
General Lingan, who was killed in Baltimore by the mob for 
supporting, with Henry Lee, the Federal Republican of Alex- 
ander Hanson, the organ against the war with England. He 
was the grand- father of . Mr. James Lingan Randolph, the 
chief engineer of the Metropolitan Branch. Here, also, is 
another fine estate, said to be the property of Ogle Tayloe. 
There is good spring water at Gaithersburg, and fine building 
sites. 

Barnesville is three miles from the base of Sugar Loaf 
Mountain, which is said to be 1,200 feet above the sea, a tall 
irregular knob like a bastion, at the angle of the escarpment 



720 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

of Parr's Bridge, extended between it and the Monocacy, with 
a Creek flowing back on each side. The sides of the Mountain 
are scarcely passable to a mule ; its summits are milk white, 
and this is said to be caused by the copious guano of the innum- 
erable buzzards which roost there, and which may be seen 
every morning starting off by hundreds to their daily revelry 
amongst the distributed carrion of the plains. The Metropoli- 
tan and the old stem branches are here thirteen miles apart. 
The mountain is a coast-survey station, and forms the triangu- 
lation by the help of hills at Laurel, Manassas, and a fourth 
hill eight miles below "Washington on the Potomac. 

The Pittsburg extension has been engineered by Mr. Latrobe, 
the first great railway engineer in the United States, and the 
author of the principle of building arched viaducts on curves, 
as at the Relay House. He is the first engineer who ever 
grappled with mountain grades, having laid the first rails on 
the Alleghenies. The main elements of his character are 
minuteness, accuracy, diligence, and perseverance. He is bold, 
but never visionary, and moves upon the sure tilts of the nine 
digits to all his fine performances. He was X!hief Engineer of 
the Baltimore and Ohio railroad from 1836 to 1856, and has 
still dark hair and great vigor, although sixty-five years of age. 
He is said to be comparatively poor, though his deserts are 
millions. 

The Metropolitan line is the work of Chief Engineer James 
Lingan Randolph, who entered the service of the Baltimore 
and Ohio railroad in 1836, and has since been engineer of the 
Sunbury and Erie, the Blue Ridge (S. C.,) and the Columbus 
and Georgia road. His home is at Martinsburg, West Virginia, 
but his mother resides in Washington. He is the brother-at- 
law of General D. H. Strother, or " Porte Crayon." 

The regions back of Washington City in Maryland, on what- 
ever side, are susceptible of improvement by being cultivated 
in small patches, and the cheap prices of land ought to com- 
pensate settlers for the general sterility. Before Washington 



MARYLAND AS A FARMING STATE. 721 

City grew to be a market, land anywhere in Montgomery County 
could be bought for from three dollars to five dollars an acre. 
At present the land near Rockville is held at from twelve dol- 
lars to fifty dollars, and the gravel hills near Washington bring 
even five hundred dollarSo Hay is the best crop the Montgom- 
ery Comity farmers make.' Good poultry is raised all through 
this region and finds a market here. The worst features of 
this county are the scarcity of wate£, and the absence of rock, 
by whose decomposition the soil acquires constant accessions 
of strength. There is not a good quarry this side of Harper's 
Ferry. The vicious system of agriculture practiced here for 
one hundred years has so exhausted the land that it must be 
fed, as one said, " with guano and phosphates, just as pigs are 
fed." The silex, so abundant in this soil, will make stalk but 
not fruit. The system of burning stubble and brush in this 
region is conceived in ignorance, for the valuable vegetable 
elements of these go off in gases, and are lost, instead of being 
retained by rotting in compost heaps. This county needs the 
German farmer, with his practical knowledge, economy, and 
persistence. Maryland, as an agricultural state, is fifty years 
behind Pennsylvania and New York, yet it is as capable of as 
much good as the plains of Flanders. 

The Virginia side of the Potomac is, in some respects, more 
agreeable than the parts of Maryland we have described. The 
lower Appalachian range, called indifferently the Catochin and 
the Bull Run Mountains, crosses the Potomac at right angles and 
can be seen a few miles back of Alexandria presenting many noble 
scarps, profiles, and prospects. The roads have declined, how- 
ever, and one had much better ride on horseback if he wishes 
to get the best ideas and have reasonable comfort. The Occo- 
quan River, which gives much of the drainage to these hills, is 
by turns sombre, gloomy, and dashing, and two railroads lead 
into the region, one of which terminates beyond Leesburg while 
the other proceeds to Quantico in the region of Mount Vernon. 
At the risk of making a chapter unduly capacious we shall 
sketch Mount Vernon as it was and is. 
46 



722 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

To visit Mount Vernon is still a great privilege. Only one 
man has since arisen to vie with Washington x in the love and 
gratitude of the people, and his home is a practical frame house, 
of a disagreeable mud color, on the muddy street of an unfin- 
ished half-city. All of Mr. Lincoln that is memorable to the 
eye is found in Washington City. But Mount Vernon is still 
the same noble tide-water estate, on one of our elder rivers, 
and the sceneries which lie tt around it smell of the Atlantic and 
bear the flavor of a past great age; We shall probably never 
have a place of pilgrimage, take it for all in all, to equal this, 
and those who revere Lincoln most truly, hold as faithfully 
their allegiance to him who was first in the first war. 

A little steamboat with a weak backbone, plies daily to Mount 
Vernon from Washington. The " Arrow " can carry two hun- 
dred people, and her daily complement is not above sixty. It 
is fifteen miles from the Capital to the shrine, and the fare is 
$1.50, of which a third goes to the Mount Vernon Association. 
There is a poor restaurant upon the boat, and she is chartered 
by Mr. Sykes, a proprietor of Willard's Hotel. You embark 
from the foot of Seventh Street, — a rather dreary set of piers, 
and one or two nearly condemned old steamboats lying by, with 
a few dilapidated mansions looking down upon them from the 
clay bluffs, and when, at half past 10 A. M., the whistle has 
blown for the last time, you may sit on deck and look back at 
the portico and grove of Arlington, the low, rickety Long 
bridge, and the Virginia forts. Passing close into the Mary- 
land shore you see the site of Mrs. Surratt's execution, and the 
acres of shot and cannon upon the lawn of the Arsenal. Up 
the Eastern Branch, whose mouth you pass, is seen the Navy 
Yard, the bridge crossed by Booth on Good Friday night, and 
the Lunatic Asylum, looking like a palace on a steep. Relics 
of the war are observed, for many a mile, in broken wharves, 
erected at great expense, and now broken up for fuel ; in the 
forests cut off to the stumps to give artillery space for play, 
and in pounds for horses ; fields trampled bare by camps, and 
always the high, naked hills upholding their airy ramparts two 



A SCENE OF DESOLATION. 723 

hundred feet above the water. We pull up at Alexandria, and 
all are interested to see a sign on a brick house, of George 
Washington. 

There are some negroes and hack-drivers on the wharf, many 
shad boats, some Canada ships, very large and noble-looking, 
but no American ships. Ours have all foundered by the weight 
of pig-iron piled upon them. The town is still a city, but a - 
silent one. Hark ! and up the grass-grown streets you can see 
the ghosts of the handcuffed negroes go, doffing their century 
of curses. Everything looks old and waiting, — waiting for the 
curse to be removed from the ground. All Virginia now takes 
up the negroes' cry : " How long, oh Lord ! how long ! " We 
leave behind the grassy battery of Alexandria, where cows eat 
the moss from the broken gun-carriages, the lighthouse spire, 
and the Cameron Cove, and, crossing to Maryland again, stop 
at Fort Foote, the only earthwork of the war still kept in order 
and garrisoned. It is a strong position, flanked by a bay and 
swamp, and steep as the heights of Abraham at Quebec. Four 
miles below, on the same side, is Fort Washington, a stone 
work, blown up in 1814, but now restored and bristling with 
guns, and as picturesque a spot as one can see. The river, 
meantime, has been growing steadily wider and nobler, expand- 
ing into still, white lakes and bays, with bold, wooded shores, 
and many ancient mansions set amongst the chestnuts and 
oaks, look down from the bluffs and moundy hills upon the 
sails, which tack and veer, the tug-boats, puffing to drive 
their coal barges onward ; the shad fishers, pulling long sweeps, 
twenty men to a boat, and the net playing out astern, and 
lying upon the bosom of the water like a necklace of carbun- 
cles, while all the beachy shores are set with windlasses and 
huts where they are winding in the nets and salting the shad 
and herring. In the midst of these far, white vistas and peace- 
ful pursuits, Mount Vernon is planted amidst the hallowed tim- 
ber-trees of its former inhabitant, whose body is now a part of 
their juices and whose spirit is speaking in their noble foliage. 
" Seventy odd years he has been dead," says a Senator as 



724 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

we catch the first glimpse of the yellow mansion, with its red 
roof, cupola, and tall, slender pilasters, and all the passengers 
cease to speak, and look up at the natural lawn, dense with 
forest shade to the water's edge. We come to rest at a little 
pier, and, while the "Arrow" proceeds to further landings, we 
begin to climb a gentle gravelly path, which takes the advan- 
tage of ravine and brook, to mount to the plateau of Mount 
Vernon, covered all the way with gracious shade and musical 
with blowing leaves and piping birds. 

A few minutes suffices to bring us to the present tomb of 
Washington, standing amidst a little congregation of family 
graves, about half way between the river and the mansion, and 
quietly set in trees, whose boles rise high up as if they drew 
stature from him whom they sheltered. 

The tomb of Washington is plainer than the jealous Amer- 
ican would expect. It is a brick quadrangle, painted red and 
white, built in a gentle hillside, and entered by a high, open 
barred iron gate. If one should hunt for mean resemblances 
he would compare it to a freshly painted stable or an ice house ; 
and yet, the man who lies there and the green woods which 
cover him, shut out the worldly question as to whether he is 
fitly inurned. He lies amongst the vestiges of his private self, 
by the side of that old wife who obeyed him so faithfully and 
was happy in his service, and his glory is not divided with 
mere marble or architecture. The size of the tomb is nearly 
that of a laborer's cottage, and the gateway is flanked with 
two plain pilasters, between which, above, is set in black Tetters ; 
" Within this enclosure rest the remains of General George 
Washington." Looking through the gate, one sees, in the 
shaded light, two marble coffins lying upon the brick floor, 
their feet toward the spectator. That to the left is plain, and 
contains the dust of Mrs. Washington ; the other is embellished 
upon the lid with a spread eagle, flag and shield, and marked 
at the foot with the donor's name. It bears below the insignia 
the single word " Washington." Both marble coffins are large 
and long. Behind them a door opens into the dark vault of 



THE TOMB AT MOUNT VERNON. 725 

subsequent Washingtons, and the Scriptural passage is lettered 
above it: "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that 
believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." 

Outside this enclosed tomb are four monuments, full of the 
wordy inscriptions placed by provincial and pretentious people 
over their dead. The Washingtons who lie around their inci- 
dental relative were just able to support their derived dignity, 
and they have tried to bring that achievement to the notice of 
posterity. Every respectable American who loves the land 
with Washington's practical devotion and thoughtfulness, is 
more his relative than Bushrod Washington, or John A. Wash- 
ington, or all the Custises. There is not a drop of his blood 
upon the earth. Nature never afflicted his glory with a pos- 
terity. 

Suppose we could lift the lid of this marble box, how much 
of the form of the General should we find remaining ? Prob- 
ably little more than some blackened bones, and some dried or 
liquid dust. 

The old tomb of Washington stands on higher ground, be- 
tween the present vault and the mansion. It is a bank of sod, 
overgrown with cedars, and small trees, approached by a steep 
walk of a few yards in length, and closed by a nailed door, 
set in a low, mossy arch of brick. Here Washington's body 
remained thirty years, or until . October 7, 1837, although he 
had left directions in his will to have prepared for him a vault, 
" the present vault requiring repairs, and being improperly 
situated besides." The laggard heirs and executors were in 
no hurry to go to this expense, while they stoutly refused to 
give the remains to the government, and, at last, some desper- 
ate person, probably imposing upon himself the work which 
had been neglected, forced the door of the old vault and carried 
away the best preserved bones and* skull he could find. Then 
outside parties proposed to help the Washingtons remove the 
body, and a Philadelphia marble-cutter presented the family 
with the present sarcophagus. This man and his ally, and 
fellow contributor, have answered the question above pro- 
pounded. 



726 EXCURSIONS IN 1THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

In the old vault they found fragments of coffins, decayed 
wood, bones, bugs and snails strewn together over the floor, 
and the grave had a pungent and unwholesome smell. Wash- 
ington and his wife were found in the further est part of the 
vault, and the coffin of the hero appeared to have been dis- 
turbed; for the outer case of wood was decayed, and the inner 
case of lead was sunken and fractured. They turned back 
half the top of the leaden case upon himself, and exposed to 
view " a head and breast of large dimensions. * * The eye 
sockets were large and deep. * * * There was no appear- 
ance of grave clothes ; the color was dark, and had the appear- 
ance of dried flesh and skin adhering closely to the bones. 
We saw no hair, nor was there any offensive odor from the 
body, hut a yellow liquid dripped down from the leaden case 
when we removed it, and stained the fresh marble we had 
brought." , 

This is the tale of mortality. They sealed up with cement 
the old lead and its contents into the new case, and probably 
that momentary gust of light and air completed the work of 
annihilation. At present, if the marble were unsealed, all of 
Washington to be found there might be held in one's two 
hands. 

A winding path in the hill side, steadily rising, brings us to 
a covered spring of cool water and a curious underground way 
dug from the mansion to the river. Then, by some steps, we 
make the last ascent and come to the open grass lawn of the 
mansion, with the peculiar old house in full view, standing 
sidewise to us and revealing the barn, stables, negro quarters, 
and outhouses on the rear and flanks. The old house disap- 
points the expectation, and yet is pleasing and venerable. 
It is a low-roofed, painted, shackly, but straight edifice, with a 
high piazza which covers the two stories, and the whole is 
built of wood cut in blocks to imitate stone. The eight col- 
umns which uphold the porch are also of wood, sanded. There 
are dormer-windows on all the four sloping sides of the roof, 
and a cupola, full of wasp's nests, surmounts the whole, from 



MOUNT VERNON AS AN ABANDONED HOME. 727 

which you can see the long reaches of the river and Fort 
Washington. The house and immediate outbuildings could be 
built, at the present price of lumber and labor, for about twelve 
thousand dollars. But nobody would now build such a house. 
Instead of the high hollow portico, covering the whole front of 
the building, we would now put a low veranda and upper 
balconies. Instead of imitating stone we would carve the 
wood into pleasing designs, or use stone outright. The inte- 
rior of the mansion is pleasantly habitable to this day, but the ' 
naked whitewashed walls look very blank; the rooms are gen- 
erally low of ceiling, and one would think it a hardship to live 
in the room where the hero of the American hemisphere died. 
Neither gas, nor water-pipes, nor stoves, nor wall-paper, nor a 
kitchen under the mutual roof, but chiefly a library, a drawing- 
room, with a carved marble mantel and an old rusty fine harp- 
sichord, a hall through the house, a reaching up for grandeur 
with feeble implements, some plain bed-chambers, and a few 
relics of the great man ; this is Mt. Vernon as an abandoned 
home. 

This house is above a century and a quarter old, and good 
for another century if pieced up and restored from time to 
time. Back of it a pair of covered walks reach to the clean negro 
quarters, between which is seen a rear lawn, with garden walls 
on the sides, and across the lawn passes the road to Alexan- 
dria and Fredericksburg, so often ridden by the General. The 
gardens are of a showy imposing sort. He inherited this 
house from his half brother, and lived in it for fifty years, not 
counting seven years during the Revolution, when he was ab- 
sent. This house stood upon the mansion farm, one of several 
farms which included in all about three thousand acres. Wash- 
ington, the son of a second wife, had been married to a widow 
fifteen years, when he was put at the head of the Colonial 
.armies. He belonged to a military and commercial family; 
rather Yankees in thrift and enterprise, than like the baronial 
planters round about them. But he was a man who grew in 
every quality except pecuniary liberality, and no book-keeper 



-s 



728 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

in Connecticut watched his accounts with more closeness, al- 
though he was very rich and childless. He was the most per- 
fect fruit of virtuous mediocrity, and the highest exemplar of a 
disciplined life which the scrupulous, the prudent, and the brave 
can study. Every triumph he had was a genuine one, if not a 
difficult one. Guizot, the best student of his larger life, who 
had in his eye of neighborhood the careers of all the great 
men of France, including Bonaparte, Talleyrand, Wellington, 
etc., says that his power came from his confidence in his own 
views and his resoluteness in acting upon them, and that no 
great man was ever tried by all tests and came out so per- 
fectly. Jefferson said that he was the only man in the United 
States who possessed the confidence of all, and that his executive 
talents were superior to those of any man in the world. He had 
wonderful power in influencing men by honorable sentiments, 
and he never gave a man an office, as Lincoln did, to quiet him 
or to gain him over. His character was in little picturesque, but 
he was plain as Lincoln in the parts of life which he himself 
prescribed. Here is a true picture of him, riding in from his 
farm at Mt. Vernon : 

An old gentleman riding alone, in plain drab clothes, a 
broad-brimmed white hat, a hickory switch in his hand, and 
carrying an umbrella with a long staff, which is attached to his 
saddle-bow. The umbrella was used to shelter him from the 
sun, for his skin was tender and easily affected by its rays. 
His breakfast hour was 7 o'clock in Summer, and 8 in Winter, 
and he dined at 3. He always ate heartily, but was no epicure. 
His usual beverage was small beer or cider and Madeira wine. 
He took tea and toast, or a little well-baked bread, early in the 
evening, conversed with or read to his family when there 
were no guests, and usually, whether there was company or not, 
retired for the night at about 9 o'clock. 

Washington had a poor farm, though a large one, and he 
had to faithfully attend to it to make it productive. He tried 
very hard, late in life, to rent it all out, or to induce agricul- 
tural immigrants to settle upon and around it. It steadily de- 



geo. Washington's principles. 729 

clined after his death, and will not now, probably, bring more 
per acre than when he died. His chief crops were wheat and 
tobacco, and these were very large, — so large that vessels came 
up the Potomac, took the tobacco and flour directly from his 
own wharf, a little below his deer-park, in- front of his man- 
sion, and carried them to England or the. West Indies. So 
noted were these products for their quality, and so faithfully 
were they put up, that any barrel of flour bearing the brand of 
" George Washington, Mount Vernon," was exempted from 
the customary inspection in the British West India ports. His 
mother lived until he was 57 years old, but his father died 
when he was 11. His life was rich, but not accomplished, and 
he set free 124 slaves at his death. He always rose to the 
needs of history, and, if his household seems to lack pathetic 
a-nd feminine features, that is, perhaps, because he was never 
out of the ; lblic regard, because he had no children, and, also, 
possibly, because he was unfortunate in all his early loves. 
There are half a dozen cases on record of his direct rejection 
by ladies to Whom he proposed. Much of his life was passed in 
camps and lonely surveys, and he made himself, by acceptance, 
instead of choice, a rigid historical being, the last in a semi- 
barbarical age. 

He was worth during all his married life, about .£100,000 
sterling and it paid him not above 3 or 4 per cent, in money. In 
this quiet, almost elegant home, he received many princes, exiles, 
and refined travelers, lured so far by the report of his deeds 
and character. He disappointed not one of whom we have 
any record, and his neighbors, as well as those remote, forgot 
his austerities in his integrity. We could have placed no more 
composed and Godlike character at the fountain of our young 
State, and his image, growing grander as the stream has 
expanded, is reflected yet in every ripple of the river. We 
have grown more democratic since his time, and we often wish 
that Washington had been more pliable, popular, and affable, 
but it is to be remembered that he was a Republican and not 
a Democrat. As one of his Federalistic observers has said of 
his day: 



730 EXCURSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

" Democracy as a theory, was not, as yet. The habits and 
manners of. the people were, indeed, essentially democratic 
in their simplicity and equality of condition, but this might 
exist under any form of government. Their governments 
were then purely republican. They had gone but a short way 
into those philosophical ideas which characterized the subse- 
quent and real revolution in France. The great state papers 
of American liberty were all predicated on the abuse of char- 
tered, not of abstract rights." 

Lincoln was a Democrat rather than a "Republican, and he 
lived in a day of interviewing reporters, of land grabs, and 
ransacking common schools. But what man of his day re- 
sembled Washington in personal virtues, in illustrious his- 
tory, in complete surrender to the State ? Could his noble 
character have lived to our time, and been the model of every 
American, we should have been a democracy without corrup- 
tion, and Republicans without austerity. See how he treated 
his nephew, Bushrod, when Bushrod wanted an office : 

" Your standing at the bar would not justify my nomination 
of you as Attorney to the Federal District Court, in preference 
to some of the oldest and most esteemed general court law- 
yers in your own State, who are desirous of this appointment. 
My political conduct in nominations, «ven if I were uninfluenced 
by principle, must be exceedingly circumspect, and proof 
against just criticism ; for the eye of Argus is upon me, and 
no slip will pass unnoticed that can be improved into a supposed 
partiality for friends and relations." 

Washington told Coke, the Methodist, that he was inimical 
to slavery. The better elements of our age were all intelligent 
and growing in him. But the mighty whirlwind raised by 
Rousseau, and by Jefferson, blew upon the country, and we are 
what we.are ; while Washington and Lafayette, soldier and 
pupil, stand the only consistent great figures of the two hemi- 
spheres, the last Republicans of the school of Milton and 
Hampden. 

Such as he was, here he lived and lies, and the vestiges of 



GROWING INTEREST IN THE RELICS. 731 

the breaking up of the past are all around him ; the key of the 
Bastile ; his surveyors' tripod, which first measured the streams 
beyond the Alleghanies ; and at last the forts which the North 
planted against Virginia slavery. 

Mount Vernon is now inhabited by Mrs. Cunningham, the 
stewardess or guardian of the small part of the estate pur- 
chased by a ladies' association, and with a few servants, she 
collects a fee from visitors and sees to the stability of the man- 
sion. Some over-critical people have alleged that she was a 
rebel. I only know that she did her duty here, and the civil 
war never crossed the edge of this estate. Since I last visited 
Mount Vernon, the people of some pious little town in New 
Jersey have sent an oil-cloth for the floor of the great saloon 
here, and every year shows the reviving interest in Washing- 
ton's fame and homestead. The contiguous farms are owned 
by Northern men, the best of them by a gentleman from Mich- 
igan. There are few people roundabout who preserve any 
remembrance or reliable hearsay of Washington. A new ele- 
ment has come in, and the negro banjoist on the " Arrow " 
seemed like a merry avenger, as he sung, with grinning good 
humor : 

" Babylon's a fallen, 
Babylon's a fallen ; 
We're gwine to occupy the land." 

Mount 'Vernon, land^ise, stands three miles from a main 
road leading from Alexandria to Fredericksburg. The road 
runs some distance back from' the river to evade swamps', 
creeks, etc., and, therefore, affords scarcely a glimpse of the 
Potomac and its mild, wide sceneries. Alexandria is nine 
miles northeastward, and Qccoquan is twelve miles southwest- 
ward. There is no road leading into the back country along 
all these twenty-one miles, unless it be a wood path or a 
farm lane, and the nearest town back from the Potomac is 
Fairfax Court House, twenty miles off. This is the case even 
at present, if we except a settlement of New Jersey Quakers 
on a part of the Mount Vernon estate. The back road, more- 



782 EXCURSIONS^ IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

over, is one of the worst in any country, and probably worse 
now than when Washington was President. I discovered this, 
last fall, to my sorrow ; for, in a fit of enthusiasm to explore 
the Old Dominion, I rode on horseback over the whole road 
between Alexandria and Fredericksburg, a distance of forty- 
five miles. Washington rode over most of it to visit his aged 
mother for the last time in 1789, — the same day he was advised 
of his election to the Presidency, — and as lie made the round 
trip, going and returning, in twenty-six hours, while I was two 
days riding one way, it follows that the roads are worse or that 
the General was a better rider. 

From Alexandria to. Mount Vernon Gate, by road one sees 
nothing but deep gulleys, skirts of swamp, and a couple of 
creeks which eat the bowels out of the hills year by year with 
the industry of Prometheus' vulture. 

Passing the private road to Mount Vernon, nothing is to be 
seen but worn-out lands, pine barrens, and more swamps, until 
you reach the Ancontink saw-mills and the frightful old ruin 
of Pohick Church. This was the family church of Washing- 
ton until the close of the revolution, when all the big proprie- 
tors began to attend a new church at Alexandria. Then Pohick 
was left to its fate like many an Episcopal edifice, and the fid- 
dling and lying old " Parson " Weems claimed to be its rec- 
f tor, as he peddled Matthew Carey's books and wrote his own 
" biographies " of Washington and Marion. Bishop Meade, the 
Froissart of these old ruined churches, says that Weems never 
was a Virginia parson, never had any principle, and sold Tom 
Paine with one hand and the Bishop Llandaff 's answer to him 
with the other. Weems' family were Methodists, living at 
Dumfries, and he appears to have been a cross between George 
Francis Train and Dan Rice. Beyond Pohidk is a most pictur- 
esque town and river called Occoquan, where the once bloody 
streams flowing from the battle-fields of Bull Run, Groveton, 
Warrenton, and Catlett's and Bristoe's Stations, tumble seven- 
ty-two feet by successive falls. This is a fair country village, 
inhabited by Quakers and by some Unionists, who raised a flag- 



ALTERED PLACES. 733 

pole here for the Republican party during the Fremont cam- 
paign. The height of the rocky, wooded hills, the thunder of 
the waters, the wildness of the gorge, the beauty of the bridge, 
the hum of the mills, and the aged and recent associations of 
the place gave it a mysterious, almost awful, significance to 
me. A petty stream, it .yet rose in the Bull Run Mountains, 
nearly forty miles away, and was the largest tributary of the 
Potomac below the Shenandoah and Monocacy. It ran under the 
Stone bridge, where Ayres, with one battery, stood solitary in that 
dreadful rout, — the one gun that protected Washington from the 
fury of the house of Richmond. It was the favorite, and also 
the most dangerous and unreliable, ferry of George Washing- 
ton's neighborhood, and nature had bedecked'it out of her own 
ruins. The Occoquan River empties into the Potomac just 
below this picturesque hamlet, and one of its headlands, High 
Point, marks the nearest approach of the rebel river batteries 
to Washington during the autumn succeeding the battle of 
Bull Run. These batteries lined the river at High, Freestone, 
Cockpit, Shipping, Smith's, Chotant's, and Matthias' Points, 
until the advance of Burnside's army began by the railway 
line of Acquia Creek, in November, 1862. It thus happened 
that Mount Vernon was not molested by either side during the 
war of secession ; for it was in general between the army lines, 
or, at any rate, doubtful ground. 

Beyond Occoquan the Fredericksburg road passes ten miles 
over a God-forsaken country, till it reaches what was once 
Dumfries, on the banks of Quantico Creek, — a town once flour- 
ishing, founded by Scotch emigrants, and a place of wealth, 
revelry, shipping, and banking. Now, there are not fifty inhab- 
itants ; the Quantico Creek has filled up, and a town that once 
bade fair to be the rival of Baltimore and Norfolk is absolutely 
extinct. 

For the rest of the way to Fredericksburg there is nothing 
to be seen but the abandoned camps of Burnside's and Hook- 
er's armies, and some ruined Episcopal churches. All Virginia, 
indeed, is in its church ruins a ghastly reminder of Jefferson, 



734 EXCUKSIONS IN THE POTOMAC COUNTRY. 

who was to ecclesiastical architecture here what Richelieu was 
to the baronial castles of France, a leveller and a destroyer. 
The Declaration of American Independence was only three 
months old when he moved upon the English Established 
Church, entail and primogeniture together. In 1779, he abol- 
ished tithes and parish rates, and in 1801, the first year of his 
Presidency, he sold the glebe lands, the last support of the 
Established Church, an act for which every drunken, fox-hunt- 
ing parson called Heaven's vengeance upon him. But, never- 
theless, nearly the whole Church Establishment fell into the 
hands of the owls and lizards within ten years ; for there was 
no spirituality remaining in it, and it had become a useless sur- 
vivor of the planters' aristocracy, and of the parsons, Bishop 
Meade himself says : " In order to conceal the shame of the 
clergy from the young people the elder ones had to hurry them 
away to bed when. indulging freely of the intoxicating cup." 

These sketches will convey to you some idea of Washington's 
life at Mount Vernon — one of a few big planters on ruined 
land, making a losing fight against bad soil, and without mar- 
kets or other contiguous towns than mere shipping villages. 
The soil can be brought up slowly by plaster and clover, and 
the ague can be driven off by an efficient and generally sup- 
ported system of draining and farming ; but Virginia needs 
common roads, live stock, and intelligent, thrifty laborers. 
These are coming rapidly, and I apprehend that men of weak 
constitutions from New England and Michigan, who now go to 
Florida to winter, will do much better by settling above Fred- 
ericksburg on the Potomac. There is a railway required on this 
route to complete the Acquia Creek line and make it a trunk 
line between New York, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh. Forty 
miles only remain to do, to flank the Orange and Alexandria 
Railway, and reduce the time from Baltimore to Richmond to 
three hours from seven, as it now takes. Land here is worth 
$20 an acre, with buildings. As the country fills up, every 
part of this land will be redeemed, enriched, and made mar- 
ketable. It is well timbered, and the fisheries and oyster beds 



THE POTOMAC VALLEY AS A HOME FOR INVALIDS. 735 

are of the best. For fruit-raising it is well adapted, and river 
navigation places it within a day's reach of a dozen markets. 
There are dismays here, but not to compare with the wood- 
ticks, the alligators, the moccasin, the fleas, the fevers, and the 
isolation of Florida. Run-down, land, two sickly months, and 
some dying-out rebels, are the evils of the lower Potomac. 
But it is the oldest part of America, and for scenery, ruins, and 
variety of products and markets the most enjoyable part of the 
whole Atlantic slope. The Chesapeake Valley is the San Fran- 
cisco Valley of the East. Freedom can make it worthy of 
Mount Vernon- 



OHAPTEE XL. 



ART, LETTERS, AND BOHEMIANS AT THE CAPITAL. 

Around the Capital of a great nation the artistic and liter- 
ary spirits have always assembled, and this has been the case 
with Washington. It has been from the beginning of its his- 
fory a place of resort for tourists and literary men, and a place 
of abode for journalists, scholars, and artists. The kindly 
Paulding was both Secretary of the Board of Navy Commis- 
sioners and Secretary'of the Navy, and the air of the latitude of 
Washington appears in his style. William Wirt gave scarcely 
less time to literature in this District than he had given in 
Virginia. Robert Walsh, perhaps the founder of review liter- 
ature in America, was educated at Georgetown, and spent 
much oi his life at Washington. Here Joel Barlow, the author 
of the Oolumbiad, built himself a mansion in the Jeffersonian 
day. For many years the publishers of that most useful reposi- 
tory, now unhappily discontinued, issued iW/es's Register, on 
Louisiana Avenue. Sparks, Irving, Kennedy, Poe, Legare, 
Cooper, Motley, Bancroft, Ross Brown, and Mark Twain are 
amongst the hundreds of notable men who have at periods 
been tenants of the city. Here resided Schoolcraft, Stanley, 
Catlin, and others who have transmitted the wild Indian to 
wonder and fame. Here Peter Force, the pious book collector, 
lived until the Government took his library, and then died for 
employment and want of responsibility. The most influential 
novel in the world was published in monthly parts by Mrs. 
Stowe in a Washington newspaper. The diplomatic and official 

736 



THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. 737 

history of the country has been almost wholly edited and col- 
lected here, and the journalism of the country has been in great 
part learned here. 

There were, say in the year 1868, when I moved to Wash- 
ington, four kinds of newspaper correspondence at the Capital 
City. First, the Globe; second, the Associated Press ; third, 
the Special Telegraphers ; fourth, the Special Correspondents. 

The Globe was a mere name for a daily paper, printing the 
verbatim debates of Congress. The best stenographic reporters 
of the country reported for it. Four of them took charge of 
the Senate ; five of the House of Representatives. They re- 
ceived about $3,500 apiece per session, and the Globe proprie- 
tors received their profit, a handsome one, besides. These 
reporters only had seats on the floor, wrote out their respective 
notes in manuscript, and only occasionally some member re- 
vised his speech or printed what he never said at all. These 
reports are, therefore, as absolutely correct as the world will 
ever get any mere utterances ; but they are utterances alone, 
and give no ideas of the manners, the men, or the surround- 
ings ol said utterances. 

The Associated Press was originally an association of half 
a dozen or more New York City daily papers, formed to econo- 
mize and receive in common, reports by telegraph from the Cap- 
ital and elsewhere. This association sold news to papers of 
the rest of the country, which formed subsidiary organizations. 
The Washington news for the Associated Press was chiefly 
collected by a Mr. Gobright, a painstaking, responsible, and 
courteous gentleman, past the middle age, and being chiefly 
concerned with the things already passed and happened, was 
generally very faithful indeed. The Associated Press had the 
respect and confidence of the highest officers of the Govern- 
ment, and it gave the people outline news so that they were 
kept tolerably well and promptly informed of the facts at the 
Capital. Reporters in both Houses prepared abstracts of Leg- 
islative proceedings for Mr. Gobright, and he and his assistant 
47 



738 ART, LETTERS, AND BOHEMIANS AT THE CAPITAL. 

collected executive and department matters at their fountain 
head meanwhile. 

The Special Telegraphers were isolated young men repre- 
senting a paper apiece or a combination of papers which re- 
quired more detailed impressions and prognostics of news than 
the Associated Press gave. The youth of many of these men, 
the number of them and the competition among them, accounts 
for much hap-hazard and premature information which appeared 
prior to and about the year 1868. Many of these men were 
partisans, and wrote, by a mistaken conception of duty, news 
of a very partisan bias to their several papers. Others were 
maintained by departments of the Government, and inclined 
toward the quarter where their bread blew from. Most of 
these were indifferently paid, and being alternately rebuffed or 
cozzened by officials much of their correspondence expresses 
the momentary gratitude or spite of the time. They were, 
however, the apprisers of the people of matters else too late 
disclosed, and in the concurrence of their rumors, impressions 
almost prophetic lay. Those officials who would have been 
gladdest to use the telegraphers were most forward on adverse 
occasion to denounce them at the Capitol, and the present age 
(posterity), had better rely upon the prattle of these cotem- 
poraries and neighbors of the public men of 1868, to find the 
respective eminence thereof, than upon any opinion of said 
public men themselves. To each of the said public men of the 
year 1868 there was but one perfectly great character, and 
that was the man Ego. 

The special correspondents were amateur literary men, 
lookers-on in Washington, library readers, young office-holders 
with a destiny to throw ink, or people with a mission and a 
plethora of words. Those of them most reverent to public 
life and people had a religious turn or held an office. Some 
of them were humble as . Mrs. Heep, and others held great 
State palavers with Presidents and Senators. From the writ- 
ings of these worthies we can see the Government of the time 
reflected upon almost every variety of mind. Human nature 



THE SCULPTOES AT THE CAPITAL. 739 

is the combination safe key to reconcile this mass of conflicting 
correspondence. That portion of it which is apt to be most 
incisively true was written by men who didn't care a — nything 
about parties. 

The lives of the sculptors and modelers about Washington 
would make a quaint story, and some passages in the arch- 
itect's reports show. the measure of their compensation. 

Giovanni Andrei of Carrara, Italy, was the Superintendent 
of ornamental sculpture and carving at the Capital from 1806 
to his death in October 1824. Bulfmch endorsed him officially 
after death as " able, refined, faithful, correct, devoted and 
urbane." A correspondent of Mr. Jefferson in Italy selected 
Andrei and shipped him to the new city of the west, where he 
kept his place under several architects. Poor Italians ! Their 
vague memories haunt the great edifice like their queer per- 
formances. Anderi's salary was $1,125. 

There were four sculptors at the Capital in 1825, Antonio 
Capellano, Luigi Persico, Nicholas Gevelot, arid Enrico Ca^tsici, 
each receiving about $1,500 a year. Francis Jardella, Super- 
intendent of carvers, received $1,187.50. Carvers received 
from $1.50 to $2.00 a day. 

The salary of Charles Bulfmch the architect, was $2,500 per 
annum, and the sculptors Antonio Cappellano and Luigi Per- 
sico rec .ived each $1,500 a year. 

In 1838-34, Luigi Persico occupied a room in the abandoned 
temporary Capitol for a studio, and modeled his nondescript 
statue of Columbus and the Indian girl there. 

The bondsmen of Enrico Candid in 1824, in the sum of 
$4,000, were Joseph Gates and Wm. W. Seeton. Cansici was to 
have received $10,000 for a marble group to ornament a clock in 
the Senate. 

In the extensions, and just previous to the rebellion, T. 
Vicenti, modeler and sculptor, received six dollars a day ; the 
architect-in-chief, Mr. Walter, received $4,500 a year, Samuel 
Strong $2,000 a. year as Superintendent, M, C. Meigs success- 
or do., $1,800 only as Captain of Engineers; draughtsmen got 
$4 a day, and foremen, $4.50. 



740 ART, LETTERS, AND BOHEMIANS AT THE CAPITAL. 

In the old Capitol centre, exclusive of the wings, there were 
41 rooms, besides the Rotunda and Library, and eight of these 
were in the fourth story. The fine old chimney-pieces and 
hearths in that edifice cost $40 apiece ; the carvings of the 
capitals of the great columns of the old portico $260 apiece ; 
hard burnt bricks cost $5.25 a thousand. 

Mr. George Blagden, the constructor of the Capitol, died 
accidentally by violence in 1826. He had been for years in 
charge of the practical work at a salary of $1,500 per annum. 

After Congress re-occupied the Hall of Representatives in 
1820, its acoustics were so bad that all sorts of remedies were 
tried for the ten years ensuing, such as spreading carpets and 
draperies, suspending canvas between the floor and the open 
dome, framing a wooden partition between the columns of the 
prostyle, etc. A very distinguished Committee, composed of 
Henry Clay, James Barbour, ar.d William Wirt, invited Wil- 
liam Strickland of Philadelphia, to assist Charles Bulfinch the 
architect, in improving the Hall, but- nothing was accomplished 
until "Robert Mills, an ingenious architect, who had passed 
through the city in 1821 and again in 1827," was called upon, 
Bulfinch notwithstanding, to remodel the place. This he did 
in 1838, by reversing the speaker's chair, and all the seats, 
raising the floor and constructing a wall behind the third seat 
in the galleries. 

Guiseppe and Carlo Franzoiii, brothers, and their cousin 
Jardella, did some good work about the Capital between 1809- 
19. Carlo Franzoni made the beautiful clock in the old Hall 
of Representatives, aii allegorical group in the law library, 
and the columns in the old staircase which are composed 
of stalks of maize with the ripe ears carved in the capitals. 
He died in 1819 at the age of thirty. The work of the elder 
Franzoni perished in the burning of the Capital, except an 
eagle at the Navy Yard. These young strangers were from 
Carrara, and were said to have been nephews of a Cardinal of 
that name. 

One of the first propositions made for a historical painting 



STATUARY AT THE CAPITAL. 741 

in the Capitol, was that of a woman, Julia Planton of Phil- 
adelphia, January 24, 1821. She wished to sell Congress an 
emblematic representation of the treaty of Ghent. 

In 1832 Edward Everett reported from the Joint Library 
Committee " the expediency of procuring & pedestrian statue of 
of Washington, to be placed in the rotunda, and to be execu- 
ted by Horatio Greenough." 

Mr. Greenough's works, The Frontiersman and Washington, 
were ambitious beyond the period of that sensitive and labo- 
rious sculptor. He had more ideas than talent, and wrote 
better than he modeled. The experience of forty years has 
taught us that portrait art, particularly with the tame access- 
ories of moderii. civil costume, seldom fills the measure of ex- 
pectation. Roger Williams is our most effective statue because 
the subject was left to the artist's volition, modified by his 
scholarship. Of a like nature are the subjects of Columbus, 
and John Smith, two figures which ought to be set up in Wash- 
ington above all other places in the world. The noblest mon- 
ument to the former extant, is Rogers's bronze gate, which ii 
income respects our most valuable public work. 

The work of Crawford in the pediment of the Senate por- 
tico and upon the summit of the dome, are happier than un- 
charitable criticism will allow. The figure of Freedom is im- 
proved — whether Jeff Davis suggested it or not is no matter — 
by the nondescript headdress, which replaced the original 
Phrygian nightcap. The plumes give it somewhat of the 
style of our open-air Indian, whose memory is kept in the hill 
and river nomenclature all around the Capital, and its pose' is 
light and easy, its drapery flowing, yet dignified, and the 
face is calm, gracious, and inviting. The work in the pedi- 
ment is likewise excellent and varied in action and sentiment, 
and sufficiently harmonized in the composition. It is easy to 
sneer at statuary; if we possessed Buonaroti's Moses, his 
horns would give a fund for all the cheap and illiterate witti- 
cism in the land. 

There are busts in the Capitol of all the Chief Justices, and 



742 ART, LETTERS;, AND BOHEMIANS AT THE CAPITAL. 

Taney suffers nothing for being debarred the court-room — rather 
those who set his eloquent face in exile. The relievos of the 
Rotunda, which to some appear hideous, are merely reproduc- 
tions from old engravings contemporary with the explorers 
delineated. The figures in the central portico of the East 
front, by Persico, and others, are redeemed by their quaintness ; 
for allegorical art should not necessarily stand the test of 
mathematical criticism. Grime and eccentricity have their 
allurements in capitoline art ; a broken torse or a grim satyr 
in stone may be more fitting for a public walk or nook than a 
bran new effigy of something whose current fame is provoca- 
tive of ridicule. "Whoever has walked in Turin, Munich, or 
Berlin, may behold in the places of honor, statues nearly as 
bad as Mills' Jackson and Washington, those monuments of 
provincial favoritism, triumphant over national scholarship. 
The poor little monument before the City Hall will play its 
part in the public scenery as much as the Washington Monu- 
ment, which should never have been undertaken by disorgan- 
ized and desultory popular contribution. Only governments, 
which act with unified spirit and are supported by the public 
resources, are capable of prosecuting such large works to com- 
pletion. With all our praise of a " strong Government," and 
our yearning for a " nation," we Americans are most captious 
about those things which demonstrate the general state. We 
write columns against the awarding of a pitiful statue to an 
artist at the Gapital, while we give millions to a land swindle 
on our frontier ; and we begrudge the Federal site every orna- 
ment which Congress dares to vote it over the wagging heads 
of rural constituencies. We are always reminded of The Peo- 
ple, but The State is nearly friendless and must be our men- 
dicant. For a good colossal statue in Washington, we suggest 
the subject of the Demagogue, that many-headed scoundrei 
who has ruled us more than law or patriotism. 

A great deal of fun has been excited from the statuary 
around the Capital, but national statuary has been the subject 
of pasquinade in every country. Even Clark Mills' queer pro- 



TRUMBULL AS AN ARTIST. 743 

ductions may strike posterity who will regard them as valuable 
by their stiff literalness. 

John Trumbull, the artist, having been summoned to take 
measures to protect the paintings from dampness, reported as 
follows : 

" But one of the paintings testifies to the possibility of 
their being approached for the purpose of doing injury : the 
right foot of General Morgan, in the picture of Saratoga, was 
cut off with a sharp instrument, apparently a penknife. I have 
repaired the wound, but the scar remains visible. If I had 
possessed the authority, I should have placed in front, and at 
the distance of no less than ten feet from the wall, an iron 
railing of such strength and elevation as should form a com- 
plete guard against external injury, by ill-disposed persons, 
unless they employ missiles of some force." 

The delightful grimness of this diction, reminds one of 
Trumbull's art, which is sedate, dignified, and formal. An 
English traveler has made this criticism upon Trumbull's 
themes : 

" The truth is, the subjects are unmanageable. In the De- 
claration of Independence, we have a respectable congregation 
of decent farmer-looking men, staring quite as vacantly from 
under their periwigs, as the solemnity of the occasion could 
possibly demand. A few are seated or standing at the table 
which displays a large scroll of parchment. The rest iire 
seated on benches, waiting apparently with exemplary patience 
the completion of the important document. 

" Out of such materials, Titian himself could not have made 
a picture. The subject admits of no action, nor of strong emo- 
tion of any kind. Then the quantity of canvas which is de- 
voted to coat, waist-coat, and breeches, and the rows of clumsy 
legs, without one bit of drapery to conceal them !" 

There are many curious comparative facts about the Capitol, 
of which I often think when I walk there. It is the most ex- 
traordinary composite structure in the world. In the main 
classical, it still contains the crudeness and quaintncss of a 



744 ART, LETTERS, AND BOHEMIANS AT THE CAPITAL. 

Flemish Guddhuis. Here are Corinthian capitals, powerful 
monoliths, as florid as they ever blossomed in Athens, and 
near by are homely capitals devised by Jefferson, of corn in 
the ear, the headed sheaf of the wheat, and the tawny leaf of 
the tobacco. Parts of the masonry are formidable as the 
arches of the Coliseum, yet there is a dome of iron such as 
no year of our Lord but this could have framed and put to- 
gether. A battery sends a spark of fire, like a winged lamp- 
lighter, from the eye of the dome to the coal-pit, yet the 
heathen deities swarm on every ceiling. Take the chap- 
lain out of Congress and there is not one Christian symbol 
in all this mighty pile to tell whether the nation worshiped 
Jove or Jehovah. The beautiful clock that in the old Hall 
looks clown upon the ghosts of memories, might have kept time 
when Cajsarwas stabbed dead in the Senate House. All lands 
have paid contribution here. The statuary was chiseled by 
the Arno and the Tiber ; the stairways were quarried in Ten- 
nessee. He who cut yonder bas relief, fired the infernal ma- 
chine upon Louis Phillipe. 

The hand that modeled yonder head of Washington felt the 
wrinkles of Voltaire and measured the lips of Rousseau, hi 
this bronze door a Yankee artist's wife standing for her model 
under the Pincian Hill, represents the Lady Bobadille, who, 
perhaps, had heard Columbus speak. No edifice of like strength 
and vastness known to man, was ever created with, the same 
celerity. Whoever lived in this city sixty years ago, saw only 
the blackened walls of the old Capitol defacing this site. No 
building of the elegance and superfices of this was probably 
ever erected so cheaply. The dome excepted, and the climate 
considered, it should stand, if its doom were now to come, as 
long as the arches of the palace of the Caesars. Over its three 
acres of aisles and alcoves, twice repeated in successive floors, 
one can wander of a rainy or a sunny day, never in want of 
suggestions, delights, perspectives, studies, or he can ascend to 
the lanthorn, and look upon a landscape whose principal out- 
lines are fast filling in with as strong historical associations. 



WANDERING IN THE CAPITOL. 745 

i 

One day I was passing through the Capital, and saw upon a 
door the sign " Thorpe's studio," an acquaintance of mine is 
the celebrated J. B. Thorpe, artist raconteur of New York 
City. I supposed that it might be he, who had availed him- 
self of his wide acquaintance to get a studio in the Capitol, and 
having been annoyed by this sign for some time, I opened the 
door and began the ascent of a very pleasant broken flight of 
stairs which were conducted in and out with much economy of 
space and noble roominess past one of the little old domes of 
Bulfinch's structure. The admirableness of that old Capitol 
was more manifest to me than I had previously appreciated it. 
I found that Thorpe was merely a photographer and portrait 
maker for the benefit of the Senate, but after leaving his room 
I proceeded to wander through dark passages suggestive of 
assignation, intrigue, corruption, and assassination, and at one 
place 1 could look through a crack in a partition and see two 
fellows in another room quarreling like Dutch boors. The 
Senate Library was in this part of the building, and it consisted 
chiefly of law books, documents, and bound copies of the debates. 
In the vestibule was an enormous aggregation of packages 
labeled tariff of 1842, corruptions of 1836, British outrages 
in the Chesapeake, <fec. Many of these rooms were groined in 
the ceilings, and supported by quaint columns. The windows 
afforded a delightful view right down the avenue, and there 
was but one person in all that vastness, the librarian, whose 
place I presume is a sinecure. As I strolled through the old 
halls, and looked into the empty dome piled full of documents, 
and finally got up to a place where I could peep between the 
inner and outer domes, I felt a sense of admiration for the 
early architects of our Capitol, that they could so combine, in 
the words of Jefferson, " economy, taste and accommodation." 

One day I secured a ticket for the baths and was shown down 
in the vaults of the Capitol. A negro of a buff color was seated 
on a stool opposite the bath-room door. Within, the gas burned 
softly and low in its vase, showing the floor of inlaid marble, 
the booths including the baths with the dim light through their 



746 ART, LETTERS AND BOHEMIANS AT THE CAPITAL. 

ground glass doors, and opposite each door, upon a chair, cocked 
back, sat a Congressman waiting for his turn. After awhile I 
got a chance and the negro opened one of the doors. There 
was a bath tub against the wall, hewn out of one solid block 
of marble ; the marble floor was warmed by heaters below, so 
that it felt to your bare feet almost like the warmth of another 
human skin. All the comfortable appurtenances of the bath 
were there ; the warm towels, rough and fine, the sponges, the 
soap, that had the smell of the date palm, the brush to stir up 
the energies of one's scalp, the mirror to abash one with the 
image of himself, made ruddy by the pencil of the flame from 
the moldings of the bronze side-light. With a tolerably long 
armless chemise, and a copy of Catullus, I felt that I should 
have made a very good Roman of the era of Diocletian. 

One peculiarity of the Capitol when lighted up by night, is 
that the flags hoisted over the two chambers are made visible 
as in the clear daylight by the illumination of the enameled 
glass in the roofs. The many flames of gas between the upper 
and lower panes shed a white light like a halo, around the 
streaming colors, and in the densest darkness the spangles and 
the stripes shine like banners in the midnight. When the 
Capitol itself is half in shadow, and the tholus seems to be 
merely a spire of fire, the calmly unfurling flags over the wings 
show all their dyes to the darkness, and the effect is beautiful. 

One night during the Impeachment trial the Capitol looked 
better than I ever saw it. There was a trifle of rain without, 
and where the lantern glowed with flame the mist all round 
about was visible in passing clouds. So from wings where 
House and! Senate' sat, the mists were floating away from the 
outshaken flags, as if the mists of doubt and war were rolling 
off, while all the marble walls were touched with mild rube- 
scence. 

Within the Senate Chamber the atmosphere was also good, 
— the dark, rich red carpet, the pale orange tint of the walls, 
the dark, attentive rows of people above, many of them in- 
tensely interested and orderly as Judges. This building will 
figure in such phases in many a fiction. 



brady's collection of negatives. 747 

The latitude permitted to Cabinet Ministers in recent years 
has put in their power to make portrait galleries in each of the 
great departments. 

Mr. Creswell has made a gallery in the Postal Department 
of all the Postmaster Generals since Franklin. These por- 
traits are large photographs, tinted in India ink, and separately 
framed, and they cover the walls of his business office. Most 
of them are said to be striking likenesses, and they indicated 
a fine, sagacious series of faces, some forty or fifty in number. 

Speaking of photographs, a New York photographer, known 
to the country at large as M. B. Brady, who has spent thirty 
years in waylaying 'every notability — citizen or foreign — of 
distinction ; and who, during the war, expended several thou- 
sand dollars in following up the army with the camera, repro- 
ducing all the climatic war scenery with the vividness of actual 
occurrence, — Brady finding himself possessed of nearly a barn- 
full of negative plates and proof copies, wishes Congress to 
purchase the whole set for the Congressional Library. It seems 
to me that, as goverment does very little for the intelligent 
needs of the people, while it has recklessly given appropriations 
in land, franchises, and money to material things, often of very 
doubtful legitimacy, that this really remarkable collection of 
views and portraits might be added to the library without in- 
fringing upon any severe precedent of parsimony. I do not 
know how much is asked for this gallery, though I suppose 
about enough to pay five able-bodied " Carpet-baggers" per 
annum. Amongst them are large-sized pictures of nearly evory 
person in any manner associated with the period of secession 
and civil war. The list extends back to the times of daguer- 
reotypes, and embraces pictures, taken from life, of Chancellor 
Kent, Fenimore Cooper, Edgar A. Poe, Audubon, Andrew 
Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and nearly every person of any 
significance who has affected this nation for a quarter of a cen- 
tury. Brady has nearly impoverished himself by conducting 
this wild goose chase after notabilities. He seems to have 
undertaken it from genuine hero-worship, without knowing how 



748 ART, LETTERS, AND BOHEMIANS AT THE CAPITAL. 

lie was ever to come out, and in scarcely any case have these 
original pictures been paid for by their subjects. In like man- 
ner did old Peter Force ransack all the garrets on this "continent 
for books and tracts of American neighborhood history, and 
bibliography, and, when Congress came to the old man's relief, 
a few years ago, he was paying $600 a month interest, to be al- 
lowed to preserve intact his overgrown collection. These books 
are now the property of the United States, and they give its 
library almost its sole dignity. The librarian, who is a hard- 
working, prudent man, seems anxious to put this great series 
of pictures in the custody of the government, and, I think, 
wherever the Capital may rest, or be renloved, that, in consid- 
eration of the growing scholarship of the country, these pic- 
tures should be secured before they are burned by fire, or scat- 
tered to the winds by the incapacity of the artist to keep them, 
and then, probably, in a mutilated condition, to be repurchased 
by the Government, at some later day, from some speculator 
or other who will have more means to influence Congress than 
this poor photographer. 

It is singular to see men in the same profession cutting each 
other's throats. When it was agitated to buy the Force col- 
lection of books for the government, a dozen old book men rose 
up from unknown alleys, and claimed that their collections had 
as much right to recognition as Force's. So now three or four 
envious photographers agitate to keep Brady from disposing of 
his gallery. The motive of his work has been entirely differ- 
ent from that of anybody else. He has simply wasted a great 
many years, and a good deal of money, upon the mistaken pre- 
sumption that somebody would one day appreciate the sacrifice. 
I have been in the habit of running over his gallery, when any 
considerable man died, to get facial data for reproducing him, l 
and I should like to see his works collected in portfolios, and ' 
put at the disposal of that literature of the future, which we 
are sure to have. Spofford, the librarian, has always believed 
that upon this continent would grow up the truest and most 
voluminous literature of any people, with as many readers, 



VINNIE REAM AND HER STATUE. 749 

reading the same language, as now constitute all the readers 
of Europe, in a dozen languages. 

It is really sad, in this millennium of material interests, of 
speculators, lawyers, and projectors, to see what a little space 
is filled, in the estimation of Congress, by people of enterprise 
in intellectual and artistic things. Little Yinnie Ream, who 
returned from Rome with her statue of Lincoln, unveiled it 
after a year before Secretary Delano and a little group of en- 
couragers, among whom was Senator Trumbull, on Saturday 
morning, in the rotunda of the Capitol. 

The little girl comes of an humble family from Wisconsin. 
She was made a clerk in the Post-Office during Mr. Lincoln's 
term, and developed into a sculptress of her own volition and 
aptness. Being pretty, as sculpturesses generally are not, a 
good deal of her cleverness was denied her by her female rivals, 
and she became the butt of the Boston school of men and 
women, including Mr. Sumner, who denounced his col- 
leagues savagely, for having given her the work to do, when, 
as he charged, it should have been entrusted to Mr. Story. 

After Yinnie had been awarded the contract, the impeach- 
ment trial developed in all its fury, and her accidental associa- 
tion — by her sister's marriage — with Perry Fuller, made her a 
target for the most unmanly vituperation, both in the newspa- 
pers and in gossip. 

But, when she went to Rome, the first man to step out and 
take her under his protection was the very Mr. Story who had 
been signalized as the only man fit to make a statue of Mr. 
Lincoln. 

The following is the opinion of a very able young artist, 
Henry C. Bispham of New York, upon some of the prominent 
paintings of the Capitol : 

"Bispham," said I, "what do you think of the last acces- 
sion, Powell's picture of the battle on Lake Erie ? " 

" The figures are badly drawn and painted, and, in some 
respects not as good as his De Soto. This figure lacks flex- 
ibility ; they are too woodeny. The figure of the man or boy 



750 AET, LETTERS, AND BOHEMIANS AT THE CAPITAL. 

lying dead on some floating wood on the left of the picture, 
is badly foreshortened and the arm in an impossible position. 
The background is well painted, composed and drawn. Look 
at the arms of the rowers and see their woodenness." 

" What do you think of Moran's landscape of the Yellow- 
stone ? " 

" It is very fine in a good many qualities, as in color and 
drawing. The waterfall in the distance with the vapor rising 
above it, and the river coming toward the spectator for a 
straight line, that is rather disagreeable to the eye; there is 
too much shadow in the foreground of both sides of the picture, 
and the line of shadow from right to left forms an obtuse angle, 
which is very ugly in any picture." 

" How about Leutze's picture in fresco, of " Westward ho? " 
" It is a fearful jumble of color and effect, lacking in con- 
centrativeness, and it possesses no central point of light or dark. 
The immediate foreground of figures and landscape lacks in, 
depth and strength, and the color is just as strong in the dis- 
tance as it is in the foreground. Some of the figures are well 
drawn and some quite splendidly, particularly the scout on 
horseback at the left hand of the picture. The women are 
very Dutchy in face. There is evidently a desire shown in the 
entire picture to combine great effect, great space and many 
people and incidents of travel. But in doing .this, he has failed 
to introduce a decided black and white, or light and shadow, 
and has not kept any center point of interest and strength in 
the composition." ' 

" What do you think of Powell's De Soto ? " ' 
'•At first sight it shows an overcrowded canvas which de- 
stroys the dignity and force of the subject. The horses are 
the worst part of the picture, too small and badly drawn. The 
squaws are too ideal in face, and badly painted, but the male 
figures are well drawn and colored, and well grouped- The 
cross is too small and necessitates such an exertion of strength 
on the part of so many men to raise it. It could have been 
drawn to represent greater height in the same space. The 



THE BEST PALNTINGS. 



'51 



modeling of the figure and drapery is almost masterly. On 
the whole it suits an artist better than the Lake Erie picture." 

"Now we come to the picture of General Scott on horse- 
back?" 

" That represents a very common type of art. It is thor- 
oughly a wooden representation of a horse, and there is little 
improvement in the rider, except as to his face." 

" Which of the' paintings in the rotunda do you prefer ? " 

"After Trumbull's, which have a value apart from art, I 
like Vanderlyn's Columbus. It is a good composition, quite 
clear and forcible, set at the proper distance, and the light and 
dark are well managed. About the best thing here are Rog- 
er's doors which 'are very fine, and carefully modeled, and all 
the pictures are fine compositions. The frescoes on the Senate 
side of the house are very fine, and the birds and animals sur- 
prisingly well done." 



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